


can i take your order?

by lostnfound14



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Michelle Jones, F/M, Michelle Jones is a Little Shit, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Precious Peter Parker, mj is a waitress, peter is a loyal patron, petermj stay soft, post homecoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-11-27 02:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20940962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostnfound14/pseuds/lostnfound14
Summary: one weekend, peter is at a diner having lunch with his aunt, when the waitress arrives at their table. he’s surprised when the girl taking his order is michelle jones.-slight au from homecoming where everything is the same except mj is a waitress. peter begins to fall for her and continues visiting her at the diner as their friendship evolves.updates twice a week (?).NOW COMPLETE!





	1. unfamiliar setting

**Author's Note:**

> hey y’all, i’m back at it with another petermj story because of course i am. i don’t know what made me think of this concept but when it came to me i was like whoa, gotta write this. imma be real i was going to try and focus on waitress scenes only, but this evolved into something different. it’s still a wip but i’m about 6.25 chapters in and i’m liking it! i hope you guys will too! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish! without further ado, enjoy!

“So, Peter,” May starts, leaning over the table in the booth she and Peter had chosen, in a quiet corner of the diner. “How’s school going? I feel like we haven’t really talked in forever.” 

Peter laughs nervously, hanging his head in slight shame, then meeting his aunt’s gaze again. “I know, I’m sorry about that,” he replies, wringing his hands under the table. “I’ve just been so swamped, you know?” 

May nods sympathetically. “I get it. I’m glad we could do this, though. I can tell we both needed the break.” 

Peter smiles and agrees. “Yeah.” His… extracurriculars had gotten in the way of his interactions with his aunt recently. She knows he’s Spider-Man but makes a point of ignoring the news where the red and blue spandex is concerned, and that’s probably for the best.

“You guys ready to order?” 

A familiar voice reaches his ears from in front of his table. He brings his gaze up to the speaker, and when he looks at the girl hiding her face behind her little waitress’s notepad, his throat goes dry.

“MJ?”

Her eyes snap to his, and her arms fall limp at her sides. Her shoulders are tensed like a cat who’s poised to attack, trying to make itself look bigger in the eyes of an attacker. He means her no harm, obviously. 

“What are you doing here, Parker?” She asks, eyeing him critically and occasionally glancing at his aunt. 

Peter scoffs. “I’m having lunch with my aunt. What are  _ you  _ doing here?” 

She rolls her eyes, as she likes to do whenever he speaks. He pretends it doesn’t bother him. “I work here,” she says, gesturing to her notepad and her black waitress’s apron, under which she wears a plain white t-shirt and black skinny jeans. A word pops into his head.

_ Cute. _

What? No, it’s MJ, no way he could think of her as  _ cute.  _ He still likes Liz. Still not over her just yet. Wait, that was rude, of course MJ could be cute- no, wait-

“You just gonna sit there gawking or you gonna tell me what you want to eat?” She asks, sounding irritated. Peter feels his cheeks redden, and he coughs.

“Um, sorry, uh- Could I get a, um, stack of pancakes with syrup and butter?” God, he sounds like a stuttering mess. He thought he could escape that version of himself when he wasn’t in school, but when he finds things he normally finds in school, not in school, his school-self starts to peek out from behind his not-school-self.

“Syrup’s right there,” she says, pointing with a pen to a metal can with a spout that’s grouped in with other condiments. Wow. Making him look like an idiot, even beyond decathlon practice. “And for you, miss?” 

Peter almost barks a laugh. Of course,  _ May  _ is the one who MJ treats with actual human decency. Everybody likes May. 

“Oh, I’m Peter’s aunt May, sweetie,” the woman greets warmly, placing a hand on her chest. “It’s so nice to finally meet one of Peter’s friends. You’re Michelle, right?” 

MJ pauses, her glare softening. May tends to have that effect on people. “That’s me, Miss Parker,” she confirms. “You can call me MJ.”

Okay, now Peter has to interject. “What? You guys barely just met and she already gets the MJ privilege?” Her eyes return to his, and he notices a hint of a proud smirk toying with her lips. 

“She’s clearly the better Parker, dork,” she says, and now her smirk is shining in all its sarcastic glory. “I didn’t catch what your order was,” she continues, turning back to his aunt.

“I’ll just get the house salad, sweetie. And call me May.” 

“All right,” MJ says, finishing the order on her notepad and tucking it into the little pocket in the front. “That’ll be twenty minutes or so, okay?” Her fingers dance on the table for a moment and then she’s off to the kitchen to tell the cooks.

In the wake of his silent embarrassment, Peter is unable to form words, and May is looking at him like she’s trying to figure something out. He doesn’t like it when she wears that look because he always cracks under the pressure of it, no matter what it is she thinks he’s hiding.

“I didn’t know you were over Liz,” May says curiously, and Peter frowns. 

“What?” He asks quizzically. 

“Oh, come on, Petey, you wouldn’t stop staring at her,” she says, grinning widely now. “But I like her. So if you decide to make a move, you have my blessing.”

Peter laughs, half-nervous and half-shocked. “Okay, first of all, I don’t like her like that, like,  _ at all,”  _ he points out, counting his arguments on his fingers. “Second of all, technically wouldn’t I need  _ her  _ parent’s blessing? And third, I don’t like her!” He throws his hands up in frustration, and May is laughing at him. “I don’t,” he insists over her guffaws.

“Sure, Pete,” she says, tone unbelieving. She’s enjoying this too much. Peter scowls. “Jeez, okay! You still haven’t admitted it to yourself, I guess.”

“Wha- I-” He splutters, and she has to cover her mouth from laughing out loud now. He feels decently embarrassed, and he can feel the heat all over his face and neck, and he hates it. “Whatever,” he says, shrugging. “I  _ know  _ I don’t like her. You’re just… crazy.” 

She nods, and she still doesn’t believe him. Peter wants to scream. 

Thankfully, they’re able to leave that topic of conversation in the dust as they fall back into easy chatter for the next few minutes until Peter hears footsteps coming towards their table, and he knows it’s MJ, and he’s already dreading her inevitable embarrassment of him. Again.

She finally makes it to their table, balancing a platter with Peter’s pancakes and May’s salad on one splayed-out hand. Her fingers are slender and long, dexterous, like an artist. He hasn’t seen many of her sketches, well, really, he’s only seen one, and it was from that one time she drew him in detention. He remembers the way she had captured his despaired expression and drawn his thought bubble to be nothing but a depressing gray. She’s a talented artist.

“Pancakes for the nerd,” she says, her tone sarcastic, “and a salad for his lovely aunt.”

May gasps, saying, “You flatter me, MJ.” The girl  _ almost  _ beams. He’s never seen her smile all the way, and that’s the closest he’s ever seen her get to one. A crooked tooth peeks out from under her upper lip, and there’s that word again. Cute. Her smile is cute. He wants to see it more. 

No, he  _ doesn’t.  _ He  _ doesn’t  _ like her.

“Enjoy,” MJ says simply, flipping a little bit of hair over her shoulder, and she walks away from the table. The second she leaves, Peter can feel May staring lasers into the side of his head as he watches her go. 

“What?” He asks, exasperated, when he turns back to her, because she’s smiling at him like that again, like she knows more about him than he knows about himself.

“Nothing,” she says playfully, choosing that moment to start digging into her salad. 

“I  _ don’t  _ like her, May, if that’s what you meant by ‘nothing,’” he says, but he also stabs his fork into the first pancake and grabs the syrup, drowning them in the stuff, just the way he likes it.  _ Disgusting, _ he hears MJ snark in his head. 

Wait, what? Why the hell did he just think of that? 

He decides to ignore it and enjoy his food. He slowly tears through his pancakes and waits for May to finish her salad, and she says she can’t eat anymore, and she notices MJ walking through the aisles of tables and calls out to her to ask for the check.

Peter watches her nod and she saunters over to the counter. She looks like she’s really in her element, he thinks. She’s a good waitress.

How the hell would he know that? He’s had one interaction with her so far at this job, and she’s been nothing but rude. Yelp: one star.

But there’s something about the way she walks around the diner, like she owns the place. And the way she toyed with her bottom lip between her teeth while she took down his and May’s order, and oh yeah, that one crooked tooth that poked out when she smiled like that -

He. Doesn’t. Like. Her. He likes Liz. Is he even allowed to like Liz if she doesn’t live in the city anymore? Is there a rule against that? No, of course not. That’s stupid. He likes Liz.

MJ brings the check over faster than he can jump off this train of thought, and he has to lock his head in place with his hand in order to  _ not  _ look at her. May notices but says nothing, and slips a few bills into the little folder-thing. MJ smiles and takes it, walking away once again. Peter lets go of his own jaw and exhales deeply.

“‘I don’t like her like that,  _ at all, _ ’” May mimics him from earlier, emphasizing the right words, and Peter groans. He will  _ never  _ win.


	2. hello again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter sees mj at school on monday, and a healthy amount of chaos ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's chapter two, guys! i'm not gonna lie it's pretty hard to fight the impulse to update daily because i already have 6 complete chapters but because we practice self-restraint in this house, i'm doing okay so far. leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish! without further ado, here's chapter two! haha, that rhymed.

Peter doesn’t see MJ again until Monday - that lunch had been on Saturday. May had decided for him after she found out he was Spider-Man that he would leave his patrolling for weekdays. 

“You’re lucky I’m even still letting you do this,” she’d said after a long yelling session. She meant it from a place of love and concern, he knew. And he actually liked the weekend breaks. They allowed him to breathe, to leave the smaller crimes he usually took care of to the police because he did end up stealing a lot of their work.

On Monday, he walks into school feeling an odd nervousness. It’s not from his spidey-sense, as he’s taken to calling it, but it’s still there, consistent. And then he sees MJ in the hall, and the feeling intensifies exponentially, and _oh yeah,_ _I saw you this weekend in a place I didn’t expect to and I acted like a complete buffoon._

Someone walks directly into him, and he realizes that he’s standing completely still in the middle of a crowded hallway and people are starting to say, “move, dumbass,” so he apologizes and starts walking to Chemistry, his first class of the day.

Shit. MJ’s in that class with him. And then before he can stop himself he walks straight into  _ her.  _ His eyes were glued to the ground, and by the time he notices her Chucks at the edge of his field of vision, it’s too late. He looks up at the last second, and he sees her look of indifference devolve into a scowl as he bowls right into her, roughly pushing her a few feet back accidentally.

“The hell, Parker?” She asks angrily.

“Crap, um, sorry,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t see you.” 

“Watch where you’re going, then,” she says, and a feeling of anger surges through Peter at that moment, because wow, rude, but it’s MJ. He’s not going to be an asshole to her. She could kick him off the decathlon team on a whim, and he likes decathlon. That’s why he doesn’t argue back. Yeah.

Peter ignores her comment and instead starts walking behind her, trying to catch up, because after all, they  _ are  _ going to the same class, why not walk together? Right? “Um, so you’re a waitress?” He hears himself ask, and her head snaps back to him. 

“Weekend gig,” she explains curtly, adjusting the strap of her backpack on her shoulder. That’s when he realizes, what if he had caught  _ her  _ in an unexpected situation? She’d been able to play it off back at the diner, but now, she was acting cagey. It was probably May that had made her seem so polite.

“That’s… cool,” he mumbles, and she rolls her eyes. He knows it’s a pathetic attempt at conversation, and MJ has made it clear that she doesn’t deal with losers.

“We’re gonna be late, dork,” she says, and she begins to jog. It’s an odd sight. Peter can’t remember a single time he’s witnessed her do anything remotely physical, but she’s right. The second bell is about to ring. He begins to jog himself, but knowing he could probably sprint from one end of the hall to the other in a few seconds flat, he’s forced to go at what he considers a snail’s crawl, trailing behind MJ.

Somewhere on their way to the Chemistry lab, the bell rings and he hears her curse softly under her breath. Then she starts walking.

“Why’re you slowing down?” Peter asks, glad he’s finally caught up to her. 

“We’re already late, why not bask in the glory of it?” She asks rhetorically, and a hint of a grin plays at her lips, and he’s reminded of Saturday afternoon.

“I mean, I guess… but-”

“If you want to keep running, be my guest, Parker,” she says. “Nobody’s stopping you.” 

Eh, why not. Peter doesn’t start jogging again, instead staying at her side, and she almost looks… surprised that he hasn’t taken off yet. 

“So, do you like waitressing?” He asks, and he’s not completely sure if you can even  _ waitress,  _ like can it be a verb, or what?

She regards him coolly like he’s someone who’s not even worth her time, but then her look softens and she looks ahead. “Eh,” she shrugs. How expressive. “I’m only in it for the money, but it’s bearable.”

Peter smirks at first because he thinks she was joking, but when he notices that there’s no up-quirk of her lips, he  _ ahems _ , and swallows. Bad timing.

“Is it difficult?” He should stop talking. He can tell by the way that she’s sighing exasperatedly that she really just wants to get to class. 

“What? Trying to get some insider knowledge, Parker?” At that, she turns to him, and now he can see a small twinkle in her eye. 

“You know me, Cap’n, always trying to get an edge,” he says, mocking a salute. She barks out a laugh. Whoa.  _ He  _ did that. Um. Not like he cares or anything.

“Call me ‘Cap’n’ again and you’re cut,” she says, her voice dripping in ice-cold seriousness. Peter gulps again, but she’s still smirking, so he’ll take that as a win. She doesn’t look like she’s going to kill him just yet.

“Understood…” Peter falters, “ma’am.” 

“That’s worse.”

“Okay, I’m gonna shut up now.”

“Please.”

Peter groans at his seat at his and Ned’s lunch table when he thinks back to how he and MJ were greeted by their Chem class. Because of  _ course  _ Flash was in it.

“Penis!” He’d been greeted emphatically. “Didn’t know you and Jones were sucking face.” Cue some groans, some snickers, some curious looks (like they could ever actually  _ believe  _ Flash), and a deep reddening of Peter’s face.

Then the teacher told Flash to shut up, and so he laid off, but Peter could still feel his eyes on the back of his head. He felt them for the rest of the period, actually. At the end of class, when he practically sprinted away from his desk, was when he was able to take his first deep breath since the start.

Never again would he be caught late with MJ in tow.

Wait. That sounds… wrong. Like he’s insinuating-

Oh,  _ God! No! _

Never mind. It might be better to just forget MJ exists. That would save him a lot of sleepless nights and existential dread because lately, all he’s been able to think about is MJ. About how much he hates her stupid, annoying, aloof self. Yeah. That’s it.

“Hey, losers,” he hears her voice from his right, and when he looks to find her, she’s sitting a few seats down from him and Ned, just far away enough for people to think she isn’t associated with them but close enough for it to be awkward. Typical MJ.

“Oh, hey, MJ!” Ned greets enthusiastically, clearly ignoring Peter’s attempted death glare and silent pleas to  _ not  _ speak. “Practice is on today, right?”

“Unless someone dies, practice is always on,” she deadpans, and just like that she pulls out a book that was stored in her backpack. Ned frowns at her completely casual mention of death, but then he shrugs, because, yeah, typical MJ.

Finally, Ned looks at Peter and notices the frown on his face. “What?” He asks, clearly confused. 

“Dude,” Peter hisses. “Don’t give Flash any ideas.” He jerks his thumb over to where Flash is sitting, joking around with his friends, but he’s almost sure the guy is glancing over to his table and noticing MJ’s proximity to them.

“Dude, are you serious? Like, I wouldn’t be so worried about that if you  _ know  _ you and MJ aren’t dating-”

Peter’s eyes widen because he’s sure Ned is way too loud for it to be discreet. “Dude, too loud,” Peter says, cocking an eyebrow, trying his best to look unimpressed. Heh, kinda like how MJ always looks at him-

“Sorry,” Ned says, flushing a bit in embarrassment. Peter appreciates it. After all, Ned is his best friend, so he would never willingly embarrass him. Ned drops his voice to a whisper when he adds, “I meant, either it’s that, or…” he pauses, stroking an imaginary beard as he wonders how to continue. Then his eyes widen and his hand drops to the table with a  _ thunk. _

_ “You have a crush on MJ?”  _ He finally says, almost too quiet for Peter to hear, but with his heightened senses, of course he can. He really wishes he hadn’t.

“What?  _ No,” _ he says, his voice a bit too high-pitched. “No,” he tries again, voice not cracking this time. “Oh my God, Ned, of course not.”

A grin breaks out on his friend’s face. Crap, he should have known. Once you give Ned Leeds a piece of information that he can latch onto, he will  _ never  _ let it go. And Peter really needs to work on his acting. How much are acting classes these days? Probably too much for him and May to afford. Maybe if he offers to work at Delmar’s-

“You liiiike her,” he says, his voice singsongy, eyebrows wiggling up and down. He tries to wink, but it’s awful, and Peter can’t help but laugh out loud at Ned’s contorted face. 

“You really need to get better at winking, Ned,” he says, unable to suppress the smile that’s overtaken his face.

“So you don’t deny it?” 

Peter frowns then. “I literally denied it, Ned, were you not listening?” He asks, exasperated. Ned frowns back as if he actually couldn’t remember Peter saying “no” literally ten seconds ago.

“Oh. Well, I guess, but… I don’t believe you.”

Peter then dramatically bangs his head against the lunch table, eliciting a laugh from the boy across from him. “Of course you don’t,” he says, voice muffled by the sleeve of his sweater that he’s decided to cover his mouth with.

He still can’t win. Not where MJ is concerned.

Maybe he’ll have to get used to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you liked chapter two! don't worry, this won't be a super slow burn. at least, i think so. like i said, still a work in progress. anyway, thanks so much for reading! leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end :) until the next chapter! should be coming out on monday.


	3. am i really that obvious?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter evaluates his life, thinks about mj, and warms up to her. he also teases ned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for waiting! i know things are going slowly :( but just you wait, it'll pick up! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish, because i absolutely live for feedback! anything! thank you for reading! enjoy chapter 3!

For the first time today, Peter feels relaxed, as he swings through the air, feeling the slight October breeze through the spandex of his suit. Man, climate change is weird. Usually, by now, the temperature would be dipping below sixty degrees, but thanks to deforestation, capitalism, greed-

Okay. Maybe he’s paid too much attention to MJ’s occasional rants about the subject. The point is, he’d sprinted out of school the second the bell rang and changed into the suit in order to _ get away _from thoughts about MJ, but his brain hates him, so she’s still at the forefront of his thoughts. He can’t figure for the life of him why. 

And for God’s sake, it’s _ not _because he has a crush on her. Shut up, Ned.

He’s pulled from his distracting train of thought when he hears someone yell, “Hey, Spider-Man!” Instinctively, he looks down at the street to find the source of the call, and he sees a man in an apron waving his hands frantically to get Peter’s attention.

He shoots out a web for leverage in order to arc perfectly in front of the man, landing smoothly on two feet and one hand that’s splayed out to sit flat on the sidewalk. The man whistles appreciatively.

“Smooth moves, Spider-Man,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Listen, I know this kinda thing might be a bit below your… pay grade, but…” He trailed off.

Peter chose to shake his head and wave a hand through the air. “I can help with anything,” he reassures. The man smiles thankfully and seems to find words again.

“Okay, well, I just got this huge shipment of deep-fryer baskets and I can’t bring them all in fast enough for my liking, so… you mind lending a hand?” 

Peter nods, smiling under the mask. He can’t see it. Stupid. “Sure,” he says, peering over the man’s shoulder to see a few boxes with what he presumes are the baskets. “I’ll get started.”

He picks up one of the boxes with ease and starts to carry it towards the door of the diner. Hey, wait a second. 

It’s the diner he went to on Saturday. With May. When he saw MJ. In her waitress’s outfit. The one that made him think _ cute. _

Peter sticks out a leg to attach it to the door and pulls it towards him with his adhesive foot. As he enters, he gets a weird feeling. The diner is serving only a few customers, but the place seems… empty without the snarky, intelligent girl roaming the booths. He notices a few people starting to look at him with a familiar incredulous expression, one he gets all the time, the one that says, _ Is that Spider-Man? _

Whispers pick up, and his stage-fright is returning. He prefers fighting crime. The jokes come easier and so does the punching. He speedwalks into the kitchen, where he presumes the man wants him to deposit the box. 

Quickly, he returns to the street, where one more box awaits. He picks it up, this time using one hand that sticks to the top of it because so what if he wants to show off to the people in the diner? As he walks through the diner once again he hears a few excited squeals from children and he looks out at the booths to give a salute and thumbs-up in their general direction. After he puts down the second box, he nearly walks straight into the man, who’s smiling gratefully.

“Thanks, Spider-Man. You saved me some back trouble.” Peter smiles under the mask and scratches at the nape of his neck, a familiar nervous tic that he really needs to get a handle on, but he isn’t used to the praise he gets from the general public even after months of doing the whole Spider-Man gig. He hopes he’ll never get used to it.

“It was no problem, sir,” he responds.

The man nods then steps off to the side. “Well, I don’t want to keep you here any longer than you need to be. I think a couple of those kids want some autographs.”

Peter chuckles and scans the diner, and sure enough, he can see a small line of children forming, looking up at him nervously behind their eyelashes and gripping some pieces of paper and writing implements (mostly crayons) tightly in their hands.

He kneels down on one knee and beckons them to him. Quickly, they start firing questions at him and his smile widens, and he asks their names.

“Jayden? Cool name, dude!... Miles? Nice to meet you. Here, that’s my mask, see…? Kayla? Nice to meet you, I’m Spider-Man…”

Several crayon signatures, high fives, backflips, and hugs later, he walks out of the diner with a gargantuan smile on his face, still feeling light as he swings off into the sunset.

Peter lies restless in his bed. The last time he checked his phone, it had told him 1:37 a.m., and usually, he’s exhausted by the time he’s gone out patrolling and finished all of his homework, but something keeps him up.

That “something” is his second visit to the diner he’d made earlier that day (or yesterday, whatever). Which, of course, directly correlates to MJ. Too many of his thoughts have been connected to MJ lately, and it’s almost always unintentional. 

Well, that’s what he tells himself. The diner was just where he’d seen MJ, so that’s why he thought of her, right? But even though she wasn’t even in the diner when he was helping the man with those boxes, he still remembered the way she had peered at him over her notepad as he sat uncomfortably against the rough leather cushions of his and May’s booth.

He doesn’t even know her. She doesn’t deserve this much space in his mind. They’ve hardly given each other a second glance until literally Saturday, and all of a sudden so many little things remind him of her? It’s ridiculous.

In fact, based on the cold treatment he’s been getting from her lately he has reason enough to believe that she hates him. And why wouldn’t she? He’s a flake, a terrible (like seriously, atrocious) liar, and for the last few months, he’d been so lovestruck by Liz that plenty of his teammates had been convinced that he was only in it to get with her. (A lie, but he understands why they thought that way.)

So that night, he resolves with himself that he’s going to try harder. He’s going to come to practice more, he’s going to try to be nicer to Michelle, not give her a reason to hate him. He’s going to stop letting Spider-Man dictate his life because he’s Peter Parker too.

_ “But Peter, no one wants that!” _ Ned had told him when he’d said something similar, the night of Liz’s party. Back when his life was simpler. Back when he didn’t know Liz’s actual _ father _was the Vulture and hadn’t put him in jail and indirectly sent Liz across the entire country as a result.

Liz.

It doesn’t suck as much as it did to think of her, to think of what they could have been. But there were two ways that night could have gone: One, he sacrifices the greatest night of his life (hello, homecoming with _ Liz Toomes _) but in the process, he stops the biggest arms dealer in New York City, or two, he enjoys the night with Liz but lets the guilt of not going after Vulture eat away at him for the rest of his life.

Peter wouldn’t have won, no matter what he did. So maybe it would be better to trust his gut from now on. Patrol had been boring as hell lately now that Vulture was off the streets, so he can bear to go to some decathlon practices. And he actually plans on going to Nationals next time (if they make it).

To think, this entire thought process had hinged on the memory of one Michelle Jones. Liz had taken a backseat to someone else in his mind, for the first time since she’d left.

“Planning on coming to practice today, Parker? Or is Tony Stark going to pull up in his suit and fly you to Avengers Tower?” Flash’s voice grates on Peter’s nerves as he whispers across the room to him in History.

“I’m coming today,” he says simply, writing down the notes Ms. Varick is putting down on the whiteboard because if he gives Flash any more attention than he deserves he will never shut the hell up.

“You sure? Or is Black Widow going to walk you out?”

“Flash,” he warns, grip tightening on his pencil. If he squeezes harder, it’s going to shatter in his hand, so he puts it down on the table and clenches his fist, notes forgotten.

“What, Penis? Mad that I don’t believe you?” 

Peter ignores him then, but a few seconds later, after picking up his pencil again, he hears Flash hiss, “Ow!” and he snaps his head back to look at him. Flash is rubbing a spot on the back of his head, and lying on the floor next to his feet is a paper airplane. Then, when Peter looks past Flash’s scrunched-up face, he notices a faintly smirking MJ, who’s pretending to jot down notes in her notebook, but the page is already full and she’s just tracing over words she’s already written.

Peter can’t help but smile. Sure, she’s a total hardass, but she still has a heart.

At the end of class, as Peter’s packing up his stuff, he feels a presence at his side and when he hears the clearing of a throat very close to his ear (or maybe that’s just his enhanced hearing acting up) he nearly jumps onto the ceiling. He knows he could if he tried. But because he’s not an idiot who doesn’t care about concealing his identity, he wills himself to stick to the floor. 

Then he turns to his left and is greeted by the sight of MJ’s face. And the rest of her. Well, duh. She’s not just a floating head.

“What’s up, MJ?” He asks, trying to break the all-too-awkward silence that’s smothering the air between them.

“Um,” she starts, but then her gaze hardens. “I know that Flash was, like, being a dick or whatever, but are you actually coming to practice today? It’s important.” 

Peter smiles, remembering the agreement he’d had with himself. “Of course, MJ,” he says. “Wouldn’t miss it.” 

The corner of her mouth quirks upward. “Good. I’m- We’re counting on you, Parker.” She nods then and walks the rest of the way down the aisle of desks to leave the classroom.

Huh.

Sure enough, Peter is there in the designated classroom after school, a bit early, actually, because he’d dragged Ned along with him to show how much he cared about this commitment. Sure, the other boy had grumbled about it, knowing that practice didn’t actually start until 3:15, and they were busy reviewing the flashcards MJ had made at 3:10.

Then they hear the door open and their eyes tear away from their flashcards to see MJ sauntering over to the mini-podium that has become her post. She looks at them out of the corner of her eye and acknowledges them as, “Losers.”

Peter beams. Then he wipes the smile off of his face, because, _ what? _ “Hey, MJ,” he greets, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It sort of works. Her eyebrows furrow for a moment and he knows he’s being an idiot, so he gulps and looks down at his cards.   
Then Ned elbows him, forcing his head to snap upwards once again and meet his friend’s gaze. “What?” he whispers, and then he notices the look on Ned’s face.

It’s a knowing grin, and Peter hates it. He knows what Ned wants to say, so he speaks before the other boy can get the words out. “Shut up.” His stupid grin doesn’t disappear, but at least he doesn’t say anything.

As more of his teammates file into the room, offering their greetings to MJ, Peter decides not to look at her until practice actually starts.

Then, after the chatter picks up and Mr. Harrington walks into the room and settles at one of the desks, they hear the bell at the podium ring. “Okay, losers, let’s get started.” Peter grins.

Then the team gets into the swing of things, MJ going rapid-fire around the room, asking everyone questions on their weakest subjects (because MJ pays attention to those sorts of things) and the room’s average heart rate skyrockets. She’s intimidating. Well, they already knew that, but when she’s standing behind that podium and staring daggers into their souls, it’s on a whole new level. Peter actually feels his hands get clammy every time she looks at him like that, but whenever he gets one right, there it is again. That small quirk of her lips that tells him he’s satisfied her, and then she monotones “Correct” and moves on to Cindy, who sits on Peter’s left. 

Peter shouldn’t get so stuck on that little one-quarter-smile. After all, maybe it’s just a reflex. It’s not for him. 

He manages to get a few more of her questions right, and a few wrong, and by the time MJ declares the end of practice, he feels out of breath, despite his super-endurance. That must be MJ’s super-power, if she were to have one, he thinks. Infinite reserves of oxygen in her lungs. If she actually did take a breath during that entire practice, he’d be surprised, because she was so damn fast with the cards and the questions that he’s not even sure she fully processed the information on them before allowing the person she’d asked to answer.

Peter slings his bag over his shoulder and waits by the doorway for Ned, who’s talking to Betty. At the sight of it, Peter can’t help but smile, because this is the first time Ned’s had an actual _ crush _ and he’s just as much of a puppy dog as Ned says Peter is. His eyes are full of admiration at everything Betty says. It’s nice.

“I gotta say, they’re cute,” he hears someone - should he even be guessing at this point, obviously it’s MJ - muse at his side. Still, he feels that familiar leap of his heart into his throat, and he glances down at her shoes before swallowing and replying.

“Yeah, definitely,” he breathes. He can feel the heat of MJ’s body so close to his since they’re wedged in the doorway. He’s sure that if he shifted a few inches to the right, he’d be brushing up against her side. He doesn’t need to be thinking about that right now.

“Brant is definitely into him,” she says, leaving the bombshell to explode in Peter’s face as she adds, “see you tomorrow, loser.”

“Um, bye, MJ!” He calls over his shoulder at her receding figure, and she tosses up a middle finger behind her without even looking back at him. He smiles again. He needs to _ stop _that. Jeez.

In the meantime, though, he’s definitely telling Ned about MJ’s observation.

His reaction when Peter says the same thing is pretty priceless. “Um,” he splutters, turning about as red as a tomato as he struggles for words. “Who said I liked her?” 

Peter cocks an eyebrow. Maybe MJ has been rubbing off on him a bit. “Nobody said you liked her, Ned,” he replies, grin forming. Yeah, MJ has _ definitely _been rubbing off on him.

“I- I- Fine!” He cries, throwing up his hands in desperation. Then he calms down a bit, taking some deep breaths. “Yeah, I like her. But, you said she likes _ me? _I don’t believe you,” he says, his tone turning accusatory.

“Dude, MJ told me that Betty likes you and you know how smart MJ is. She can’t be wrong.” 

It takes a second to realize what he’s said, and all of a sudden Ned has the upper hand again. That stupid grin is back and it doesn’t leave his face as he mimics Peter from yesterday, “‘No, Ned, of course I don’t like her, oh my God.’”

Peter feels his own cheeks go red and he mumbles, “Shut up.”

He sees Ned’s eyes widen out of his peripheral. “So you don’t deny it, then?”

Well, it’s quite the pickle he’s gotten himself into, isn’t it? He didn’t deny it, now, did he? But also, he hasn’t really come to terms with the… _ whatever _ he feels for Michelle, so there isn’t a label on it just yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t already _ exist. _

Well. It’s too early to know. Today is literally the second day he’s truly interacted with her past “Loser” and “Hey, MJ” and it’s too early. But there’s the start of something there. No labels for the time being.

“I don’t know, Ned,” he says truthfully. “But it’s not… _ that, _yet. Nowhere near.”

Peter hears Ned sigh exasperatedly at his side. “You’re so weird.”  
He laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how was that? i hope you guys liked it! our boy peter is getting there, slowly but surely :) thanks so much for reading! leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end! chapter 4 coming soon! until the next!


	4. why’d you come back?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter returns to the diner and once again makes a complete fool of himself in front of mj. also, he realizes something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's chapter 4, guys! this one is significantly longer than the last three because originally, this was two chapters, but then i got rid of like a huge section of the first one because it was just massive filler, so i deleted it, then realized that the chapter would be too short without it, so i added in the chapter after it because it flows pretty well. anyway, this almost 4k word chapter is the result. enjoy! lots of fun stuff in this one! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish!

The week continues on as normal: decathlon practice (Peter makes it to _ every single one, _much to his own and MJ’s - decently hidden - delight), lunches with Ned, classes he tries to pay more attention in, and the occasional interaction with MJ that always leaves him with a borderline psychopathic smile on his face that he covers with his hand until she leaves his vicinity.

“Later, loser.”

“Bye, Parker.”

“See you Monday, Peter.”

The first time she ever called him _ Peter _ was that fateful day when he was called out of decathlon practice to make probably the most important decision of his life. (Friendly-neighborhood? Or Avenger?)

She was messing with him that time, it was clear, he could tell by the tone with which she spoke his name, almost sarcastic, but accusatory enough to make him squirm. It worked, and it was weird.

But that time, on Friday, as they walked out of the last decathlon practice of the week, she’d said it again, and there was no suspicious lilt to her voice, just… normal. It threw him off for a second, sure, but then he’d smiled because he’s been doing that a lot around her lately, and said, “Yeah, Monday. See you, MJ.”

She’d nodded and walked off down the street, in the opposite direction as he and Ned were heading, to the train. He ignored the look that Ned had been sporting every time Peter spoke any words to MJ and started talking about something, anything else.

It was odd, for her to shift to his first name so quickly. Maybe she hadn’t meant to, maybe it had slipped out. He could even see her eyes widen as she said his name, so that’s a very strong possibility.

That didn’t make the sound of it any less nice. The way she said it was nothing special, just a sigh, “Peter.” But he’s called her MJ so many times, that for her to upgrade from “loser” to his own name feels like hard work paying off. Not that he was only trying to force her into it. That would be messed up. And he knows how tightly she holds onto her adherence to feminism and the war against misogyny, and he respects that.

All that aside, he’d been lying when he said “Monday,” because he intends to visit her at the diner again either tomorrow or Sunday. She’ll still be the same MJ, but it’s almost like she’s even cooler than she already is at school when she swaggers around the diner with her notepad and killer smirk.

He spends Saturday patrolling and doing homework because he hasn’t gone out as Spider-Man for the entire week and the second he jumps out of his window he already feels liberated from all the stressors of the past week, namely the one that they call _ Michelle Jones. _

He doesn’t think about her the entire day. Today is Peter Parker’s (and Spider-Man’s) day, as a matter of fact. At least, until his head hits the pillow when he finishes his homework. That’s when he wonders how he’s going to muster up the courage to actually go to the diner. _ It’s literally so simple, just _ go. Well, yeah, but. He’s _ nervous. _ Pretty on-brand for him. 

After a few hours of psyching himself up, he falls asleep sometime between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. (wow, a reasonably healthy time?) and dreams about lazy top buns, flipped birds, and one-quarter smiles.

When he wakes up, he stays as he finds himself, tangled in his bedsheets and eyes shut in a half-asleep state, for a few minutes before he tells himself that if he doesn’t get up now, he’s never getting up again. So he lifts himself to a sitting position by swinging his legs over his bed and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, adjusting to the rays of the sun that shine through the blinds over his window. 

Instinctively, he reaches for his phone that he always places on the floor a foot away from his bed. He’s had no problems in terms of stepping on it so far. The time reads 8:42 a.m. Peter pumps a fist lethargically. He’s still feeling sleepy as hell but it’s too late now to go back to bed.

Peter pushes himself off of the comfortable mattress, yawning, and ambles over to his closet. Blue flannel? Red flannel? Nerdy science pun t-shirt? Actually, that’s most of his t-shirts. So the real question is, nerdy science pun t-shirt and red flannel, or nerdy science pun t-shirt and blue flannel? He doesn’t know which one looks better, especially which color MJ would prefer.

Psh. She probably wouldn’t care. Everything about her is casual, uncaring. The color of his stupid flannel doesn’t matter. So he goes with blue because he likes the way it looks better anyway, and the classic, “I lost an electron - Are you positive?” t-shirt under it, laying them out on his bed for later because he has yet to brush his teeth. So he zombie-walks down the hall to the bathroom and goes through the motions, splashing some water onto his face to wake him up a little more. 

It works, and he washes off his toothbrush and puts the little cover on it, returning to his room. He whiles away a few minutes scrolling through his phone until the smell of eggs permeates his closed door.

Peter rises and leaves his room, walking into the kitchen, where he hears May whistling a tune as she tends to the eggs and bacon that May’s whipping up. She’s been taking a few cooking classes, and you know, baby steps are vital, so bacon and eggs are a good place to start and she’s doing a good job so far (meaning no kitchen fires have been caused just yet).

“Smells good,” he announces from the doorway, and her head snaps up to his. She’s wearing similar attire to him (sweats and a baggy t-shirt) but she’s as lively as ever, her face being graced with a smile when her eyes land on him.

“Hey, Pete,” May says, eyes returning to the pan. “These eggs are almost done.” 

“Cool,” he says, stretching as he yawns again.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby,” he says, grinning, then clearing his throat. “Hey, so, um, I was thinking about dropping by that diner we went to last weekend? You know, um… Dani’s?”

Her eyes brighten with recognition, and she nods. “The place where MJ works?”

Shit, she’s _ already _onto him. He scratches at the nape of his neck.“Yeah,” he says, quieter. She turns to him with a knowing smile on her face, and nods.

“You planning on making a visit?” She asks, her eyebrows wiggling suggestively, and Peter fakes dry-heaving. She laughs out loud, slapping a knee.

“But, um,” Peter responds, “yeah?” Her grin softens into a smile, and that smile is one that has made him tell her some rather embarrassing stuff, like how he told her for the first time about Liz and had gone on for literally an hour until he’d tired himself out.

“Do you like this MJ?” She asks, swinging her spatula through the air as she flips the eggs. 

“I have no idea, but like, maybe,” he admits. 

May smiles. “Just take the time you need to figure it out, Peter. But if you want to do that, do you want me to come along, or…?” She gestures between them and Peter laughs nervously, not knowing how to let her down without sounding at least sort of passive-aggressive.

“Um, I think I would prefer if I could go, alone…” he trails off, but she beams.

“Of course, Pete, I get it. Go get your girl, huh?” she says, laughing as she finishes, and Peter feels his cheeks turn red but he laughs, too.

“Sure, May,” he says sarcastically, but not too much so.

And all of a sudden the bacon and eggs are done, and he’s eating standing up in the kitchen with his aunt because they’re too lazy to move to the dining table, but neither of them minds. It’s perfect.

“I need to get down to the hospital, okay? I picked up a few extra hours,” May explains as she’s washing her plate in the sink. “Enjoy your date.”

“May,” Peter insists, his cheeks turning red again. “It’s not a _ date. _” 

“Sure, Peter,” she says, smirking, parroting him.

“What-whatever,” he splutters, then walks up to the sink to clean off his own plate. She throws him one last knowing look before walking out of the kitchen. “See you later!”

“Bye, Peter!” she calls from somewhere in the apartment. Peter scoffs, but smiles, and returns to his room. He can probably get some patrolling in before he heads over to Michelle’s - _ Dani’s _, he reminds himself, because he finished all of his homework yesterday and has a bit too much free time on his hands. 

Excitedly, he pulls off his sleepwear and jumps into the suit, pushing his limbs through the accordant spots, and slaps the spider emblem on his chest before pulling on his mask and giving his room one last sweep with his eyes. 

Peter pulls open his window and jumps out of it, spread-eagle style. He whoops as he shoots out his first web, and yells, “Good morning, Queens!”

Peter returns to his apartment with a breathless smile on his face, flopping down on his upper bunk after pulling closed the window with his foot. After lying there for a second, he reaches up to the ceiling and shimmies out from above his bed, then detaches his feet and hands, in that order, so that he lands easily in a crouch. 

Standing to his full height, Peter slaps the spider on his chest and the suit deflates, allowing him to tug himself out of it. When it’s tossed to the side, Peter turns back to his bed and sees the t-shirt and flannel that he’d set to the side earlier this morning. 

Quickly, he pulls on his clothes and heads out the door, locking it behind him. He takes a deep breath, then begins the walk to MJ’s - _ Dani’s - _ with purpose.

It takes a small pep talk before Peter actually pushes open the door of the diner because his confidence from the night before had all but fizzled out. But then, when he sees MJ working the counter he almost turns on his heel and walks right back out. He doesn’t feel ready for this. 

So while he stares at her from across the diner, he has to tell himself, _ It’s not that deep. Just MJ. Don’t even worry about it. _

Peter walks straight up to the counter, not even a booth because he’s feeling bold. He settles on the stool, balancing his feet on the metal ring near the bottom, and waits for MJ to notice him. It takes a moment because she’s cleaning something behind the counter and is doing a very thorough job of it.

Then, finally, she looks up, and when her eyes meet his, they widen before she can stop herself. Then, she blinks, and her face becomes one that displays the familiar apathy that she so frequently wears in the halls and during decathlon practice.

“Parker,” she greets. Peter has to bite his lip to refrain from smiling.

“Jones,” he responds in kind, and there it is again, that fraction of a smile that he wishes would become whole. _ With time. _

She “hmph”s and pulls out _ the _notepad and the pen that’s lodged into the metal spring that holds it together. “What can I get for you, nerd?” 

“Nerd.” Not “Peter.”

That’s okay.

“Um, a cheeseburger and Coke to drink, please.” She looks at him a moment before she writes down his order, making him squirm. Satisfied with his reaction, she smirks and then scribbles it into her pad.

“Comin’ right up,” she throws over her shoulder as she walks over to the kitchen window. In her wake, Peter feels his heart banging against his ribcage and his hands are getting clammy.

_ Easy, Pete. _

Is there really any point in denying it anymore? He likes Michelle Jones. He’s scared of her and yet he can’t pull himself away. He’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame, but whenever he draws too close he has no idea how to stay that way. 

He really wishes he could emulate MJ sometimes. Her calm, collected demeanor is really something to admire. The only sign of weakness she’d ever really displayed in front of him was in Washington with the whole “everyone is trapped in the Washington monument which will collapse at any moment” thing and she’d said, frantically, “My friends are up there.”

Her voice had shaken, and it almost hadn’t sounded like her, but it _ was _her. But maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had been hiding behind a mask, and she was okay with being a little worried while not in the vicinity of her friends.

His point is, MJ is way too cool for him. Kind of like how he felt about Liz, but a different kind of cool. Liz was the popular cool, the “do I deserve to even be breathing the same air as you” variety. MJ is the closed-off, “you intimidate me too much to even form coherent sentences around you” cool.

Peter hadn’t even known there could be different kinds of cool before he met MJ. And yet, here he is today.

“Why’d you come back?” He hears her ask, and he can’t remember her returning to her post behind the counter, but she’s there, squinty eyes and all.

“The service was good,” he says, looking off to the side. It’s a very interesting wall, he reasons. Out of her peripheral, he sees MJ raise an eyebrow in what looks like surprise.

“Pretty sure I mocked you ruthlessly in front of your aunt the last time you were here,” she points out, but shrugs. 

Peter blushes, remembering that day a bit more than a week ago - calling May “the better Parker” and making a fool out of him when he asked where the syrup was.

“Well, yeah,” he concedes, “but we got our food at a reasonable time and it was good. May especially liked it.” Cue half-smile. Hmm. It’s doubled in size. 

“Yeah, she left a nice tip,” she agrees thoughtfully. “I think I treated myself to a Starbucks tea later that day.” Peter laughs openly, and her eyes flick from his own to the floor nervously.

“May can be very generous.”

“Tell her to come here more often,” she says, her tone suggesting mock-seriousness. “If I got tips like that every day, I could be living large in Los Angeles or something by the time I’m eighteen.”

Peter laughs again, knowing he looks and sounds like a dumbass, but she’s funny, okay? He’s genuinely not happy with himself for not noticing earlier. Cue another nervous look from her, like she’s not used to such a reaction.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to,” Peter responds. “I think she likes you a bit too much.”

MJ smirks. _ Almost _ a smile. “Well, it’s because I’m so damn irresistible, aren’t I?” 

“Just keep telling yourself that,” Peter says, raising an eyebrow and trying to imitate MJ’s look. She seems to huff in slight appreciation, then she hears a chef call through the window for an order to be collected.

“Be right back,” she says, strutting over to the chef who’s laying down the plate as she takes it from his hands. Peter tries to pull his gaze away from her hips as they pop with each step that she takes, and fails.

Then she’s turning around and carrying the plate with a cheeseburger and fries on the side, picking up one of those faux-glass cups and sticking it under the ice dispenser and soda machine. Peter drums his fingers across his thigh as he waits.

She takes the glass and plate up in her hands again and sets them down in front of him. “Eat up, Parker. Though I don’t know how you’re going to manage this behemoth of a burger.”

Peter smiles, a twinkle in his eye as he responds, “Watch me make this burger… disappear.”

She scoffs and says, “Deal.” That’s not exactly the answer he had been expecting - He thought she’d just roll her eyes and walk out into the diner to take someone else’s order, but she stays there in front of him, leaning over the counter like she’s waiting for the burger to collect mold on his plate.

Promptly, he begins to scarf it, periodically taking sips of his drink to wash it down. She watches with mild amusement, allowing her eyes to wander along his face. 

“Got a bit of cheese there,” she says, pointing to the left side of her mouth. Is she wearing lipstick? Willingly? Nah, definitely unwillingly. It’s probably part of the job, maybe not a requirement but a polite suggestion. Peter can’t possibly imagine MJ wearing lipstick without prompting from others.

Peter raises his hand to the side of his mouth that mirrors the one she had indicated on her own face but frowns when he inspects his finger and finds nothing yellow. She chuckles.

“Other side.” 

Peter immediately wipes it off with his napkin, inwardly berating himself. _ Of course, it was the other side. She was pointing to the left side. So that meant _ your _ left side too, obviously. Stupid. _

He goes back to his burger, and he can feel MJ’s eyes on him as he eats. In the small gap of time between a bite and a sip of his drink, he says something.

“Th’sbrgr’sr’llyg’d,” he forces out over a mouthful of cheeseburger.

“Didn’t your aunt teach you to speak with your mouth closed, Parker?”

Peter swallows and turns slightly red. “Sorry.” MJ quirks an eyebrow. “I was just saying, this burger’s really good. You wanna bite?”

She huffs out a laugh, then says, “I’m vegetarian. Also, that’s unprofessional.”

“Noted,” Peter says, smiling. The burger is almost gone, and so is his drink. He finishes them both off unceremoniously, then does jazz hands and deadpans, “Ta-da, it’s gone.”

She laughs. Like, _ actually _laughs. Peter is starstruck. Then he catches himself staring and clears his throat, looking down at the space between them on the wooden counter.

“You want the check?” MJ suddenly asks, and Peter tries not to let the slight hurt he feels show on his face. It sort of works.

“Not yet,” he says, digging himself deeper into the stool. She nods.

“I’m gonna take these people’s orders,” she says, gesturing out to the booths beyond. Peter smiles and she goes. Immediately when she leaves from behind the counter, Peter turns to watch. There she goes, strutting around in her jeans and t-shirt like the queen of the diner, taking the patrons’ orders with a smirk and a “Got it.” Peter is transfixed.

Eventually, she brings the orders to the cooks and Petre tries to make it look like he hasn’t been watching her the entire time because that would be creepy, right? Technically, she had admitted to watching him, or “being observant” or whatever she wants to call it. So really, Peter’s just making it even. That’s what he tells himself to feel better about it.

“Couldn’t go three minutes without me, huh?” She says when she returns to her post behind the counter. Peter knows he’s blushing.

“Yeah, I’m dying of thirst, actually,” Peter says, smiling and spinning his cup in a circle so that the ice cubes rattle within it. “Can I get a refill?”

“You’re really enjoying ordering me around, huh?” She jokes, then her cheeks turn red when she realizes the implications of what she just said. Peter is sure he’s about as red as a beet, because _ um. _ Now he’s thinking about some rather unsavory things. 

He kicks himself in the shin to get his mind straight, and he watches MJ swallow and take his cup without another word. Seeing her flustered would normally be a welcome sight if it hadn’t occurred under those circumstances, because he can’t remember ever seeing her blush with her eyes downcast like that until now.

She returns with his cup, with fresh ice and Coke, and she clears her throat. “I may or may not have spiked this,” she says, and just like that MJ is back.

“With what?” Peter asks, frowning.

“You’ll just have to find out,” she says mysteriously, leaning over the counter, challenging him with a quirk of her eyebrow and crossed arms. All of a sudden he’s reminded of:

_ What are you hiding, Peter? _

“You didn’t put, like, cocaine in this thing, right?” He asks, slowly starting to push the cup away from him.

MJ scoffs. “I’m messing with you.” She pushes the cup back towards him. “Did you know the original Coca-Cola recipe had cocaine in it?” 

Peter takes a sip, wearing a fake-pensive expression when he sets it down on the counter. “I did, actually.”

She smirks. “Well, you should be feeling the effects soon, then.”

Peter comes _ this _close to spitting out his drink. Instead, he allows his eyes to bug out as he swallows. MJ laughs again, and that makes two for today, two times more than he’s ever heard her laugh before in his life. “I’m kidding!” She says, smiling openly. A full smile this time. Not a quarter. Not a half.

“You’re making it really hard to take you seriously right now,” Peter says, but the humor is thankfully not lost on him. Her jokes are rather disarming, but he’s proud to say that he’s starting to get used to them, seeing them less as barbs and instead as good fun.

“Here’s a tip, Parker: Don’t ever take me seriously unless I tell you to.”

Peter nods. “Got it,” he says, then, “I’ll take that check now.”

“You got it.” MJ rips the small sheet out of the notepad and takes it to the register, Peter following her on the other side of the counter. He watches her as she rings him up. She bites her lip as she punches in the numbers, looking up at him when she finished, and saying, “Your total is 8.50.”

He hands her a ten-dollar bill, and says, “Keep the change,” trying to sound at least somewhat cool. 

All she does is unamusedly raise an eyebrow and say, “Look at you, being all philanthropic.”

“Please?” He begs, and the corners of her mouth pull upwards into a smirk. 

“Okay, since you’re so desperate,” she concedes, stuffing the ten into the register and taking out $1.50 to stuff into her pocket. She places a finger over her glossy lips, pouting slightly, and Peter needs to stop looking at them. So he laughs nervously and scratches at the nape of his neck. 

“See you tomorrow, MJ,” he says, collecting himself, messing up his hair. 

“You too, Peter.” 

His step falters for a moment, but when he looks over his shoulder he’s smiling widely, and she’s smiling a little bit herself. When he walks out of the diner, he takes one last look through the tinted window and sees MJ looking straight back at him. His gaze drops to his feet and he blushes, smiling bashfully and going on his way back to his apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! i think this is a fun chapter because of course, petermj flirting and fluff :) chapter five will be up soon. leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end! until the next!


	5. may isn’t dumb, you know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mj is sick, and peter misses her. he thinks about his crazy life and then confides in may.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! here’s chapter five! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish! thanks for your continued support! (in the end notes i’ll say some actual stuff but in the meantime, enjoy the update!)

“Dude, you’ve been spaced out for the last five minutes, and you _ love _ talking about _ Star Wars, _” Ned points out exasperatedly from his spot next to Peter at their lunch table. “What’s going on?”

Peter brings his head down from the clouds, shaking his head to rid the fog from it. “Sorry, man,” he says, and he means it. “I’m just thinking about…”

Ned chuckles. “Dude, you’ve got it _ bad. _ You literally saw her this Friday!”

Peter decides to hold his tongue from spilling that he’d actually seen her yesterday because that would a) expose him, and b) make him look way more desperate than he actually is. “Who says I was thinking about MJ?”

Ned quirks an eyebrow. “Who says I was _ talking _about MJ?” He grins as he watches Peter splutter and turn red all over.

“I- Well-” He tries, and fails. “Okay,” he concedes, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I like her. You happy?”

Ned’s eyes twinkle. “Extremely. Now I have something that I can actually make fun of you for because I can’t really diss Spider-Man.”

Peter’s eyebrows turn downward, but they settle when he notices Ned as smiling in good humor. “At least I can get you back for Betty,” he rebuts, smiling devilishly.

Instantly, Ned’s own cheeks color a pleasant crimson and he hisses, “Not fair.”

Peter laughs. “_ Not fair? _Really, Ned? That’s the best you could come up with?” He watches Ned scowl slightly, but then he gets distracted by something in the distance. Peter follows his gaze and he’s honestly not surprised at all when it lands on Betty Brant.

He decides to let Ned stare, remaining silent as he watches him watch Betty with a dreamy expression on his face. Peter covers his mouth to keep from laughing.

MJ doesn’t show up at lunch that day.

Peter’s finger hovers over MJ’s contact. He’d gotten it when she started a decathlon group-chat in order to coordinate practices, but now he’s using it for reasons he’s sure she would call “unprofessional,” as unprofessional as a bunch of members of a high school club can get. So, not that bad.

Caving in, Peter begins writing a text to her. 

**Peter Parker:**

<strike> hey mj, were you sick today? i missed you </strike>

hey mj, it’s peter. were you sick today?

He doesn’t want to sound weird or desperate, and the route he’s gone looks safe enough, so he sets his phone down and gets to his homework. It’s some light reading for English and a problem set for math, honestly a bit unfairly easy. Peter finds himself aching for challenge constantly, and that’s why he must love being Spider-Man so much: being challenged by everything at once - swinging, criminals, arms dealers with wings. 

Lately, though, some things are making him appreciate being Peter Parker more, like realizing that he has people he can lean on: Ned, and May, who might not exactly understand or relate to his problems (being a vigilante and all) but are there to help nonetheless in any way they can.

In the middle of the chapter Peter’s reading, his phone buzzes and he rockets up from his bed to grab it from his desk. He flips it over and sure enough, it’s MJ. Peter smiles, and then he reads the text.

**Michelle Jones (MJ):**

yeah, why?

Peter wonders how he can answer. Why _ is _he texting her? In the past, he would notice that she was gone but simply wait until the next day to see her. Now, something is different and he wants to know. 

Oh, who is he kidding? He knows what’s different. He has a stupid crush on her. It’s all her fault, with her witty mannerisms, dark humor, understated attractiveness-

**Peter Parker:**

lol idk, just asking

felt weird not having decathlon practice today

**Michelle Jones (MJ):**

what, nerd? scared to say you missed me?

Peter chuckles. She’d seen right through him, but he can’t let her know that, obviously.

**Peter Parker:**

you wish

i was happy to be free of your dictatorship

**Michelle Jones (MJ):**

my authoritarian ruling style has been immensely effective, parker

i’m whipping all of your sorry asses into shape ;)

Peter had thought she couldn’t possibly be funnier over text than she already is in person, but there she goes again, proving him wrong. He flops back into his bed, resting his chin on his pillow as he types out a response, knowing he looks like a stupid teenager with a crush, but that’s exactly what he is, so why not just embrace it, right?

**Peter Parker:**

okay, maybe i missed you a little bit

**Michelle Jones (MJ):**

ha, i knew it

dork 

Before he knows it, they’ve been talking for an hour, bantering over stupid things that hold no real substance, but he feels like he’s learning so much about her, by little tidbits she sprinkles in about herself. She prefers green tea over all others. She has a piece of tape covering her laptop camera because she doesn’t like the idea of the FBI man watching her at all times, despite all of the memes that portray him as benevolent and friendly. She once read eight 400+ page books over the span of ten days, because of course she did.

Those little things (and plenty more) simply make him crush a bit harder than he already had been. And he tells a little bit about himself, about how he, Ben, and May used to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos on the couch whenever he had a bad day because he used to think it was literally the most entertaining thing in the world (instead of mocking him like she normally would, she says “that’s nice”). Peter feels giddy with the knowledge that this conversation implies an increased closeness that hadn’t been there before Peter saw MJ at the diner. 

It’s honestly impressive how quickly he forgot about Liz and moved on to MJ, but he’s done some thinking. Liz was kind of like a dream. Peter knows how dumb that sounds, but it’s true: she was so perfect that once Peter actually got her, he was sure that if it went any further he wouldn’t have known what to do with himself. So in a twisted way, her being sent across the country to Oregon was a good thing (?).

No, it really wasn’t, but his point is that MJ is a bit more grounded in reality. She’s not exactly sought-after (though after catching feelings like wildfire he believes that she definitely should be). Pretty much everyone had a crush on Liz. Peter knew that he had gained a little bit of recognition when people found out that _ he _was Liz Toomes’s homecoming date. 

But he had never wanted popularity, and while Liz really was great, she didn’t represent what he wanted. MJ is a better representation of that. She’s relaxed. She keeps to herself. Everything about her is… understated. Like she doesn’t even try to be as awesome as she is, but instead, it’s an unintended byproduct of the way she acts.

Liz was infatuation. MJ is just that, a crush.

When they’re going strong, almost two hours, Peter realizes that he hasn’t read another page of his English book yet and really needs to get on his homework, so he says exactly that to MJ with a “see you tomorrow :)” and puts it on Do Not Disturb so that he doesn’t feel the temptation to pick up his phone again.

When May calls him out for dinner, after burning the chicken she was trying to make, they head out for Thai. Being with May tonight feels like a breath of fresh air compared to everything that’s been rushing at him and through his head over the last few days. She’s a grounding presence, and that only intensified after they lost Ben, holding him as they both cried, always there, Peter never having to say anything to get a hug or some comforting words. They’ve moved on together, and that has strengthened their bond to be unbreakable if it already wasn’t before.

So as they walk through the warm night to their favorite Thai place, Peter can’t stop himself from saying, “May… you were right.” Because he’s so ridiculously terrible at keeping secrets.

She turns to him, quirking her mouth to the side and tilting her head. “Right about what? Because I happen to be right about a lot of things.”

Peter looks down at his feet and laughs nervously, crossing his arms, then shoving his hands into his pockets, then clasping them together. He has no idea what to do with his stupid hands. He’s nervous. “About… MJ.”

At that, she smiles deviously but doesn’t turn away. “Of course I was. I still can’t believe I knew before you did.”

“I’ve been told that I can be dense,” he says, smiling too because when May smiles it’s like some kind of instinct rises up within him and forces his own mouth to quirk upwards. She can make an entire room feel what she’s feeling.

“Well, I’m glad it finally got through to you, huh? What made you realize?”

Peter _ hmm_s as he considers her question. What had been the catalyst? “The second time I saw her at the diner,” he realizes aloud. “It just kinda… Hit me, I guess.”

“It’ll do that,” she agrees, not specifying what “it” is, but Peter can guess.

“Yeah.”

“So,” she says, nudging him with her shoulder, “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

Peter sucks his teeth because he doesn’t know the answer to her question. As far as he knows, it’s still some innocent crush. He doesn’t know MJ well enough to ask her on a date yet. That’s been his mission: to become her friend before anything else.

“I think I’m going to wait and see,” he finally replies. “It feels too soon.”

May nods in appreciation. “Smart boy,” she says lovingly, ruffling his hair. “I’ve raised you right.” Peter smiles and leans into her, and she moves her hand from his hair to around his shoulder, and they walk like that until they arrive at the Thai restaurant, and they have a happy dinner, eating as much larb as their hearts desire and laughing their heads off at nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! i realize that this one was a bit more filler than the others, but it served as a nice in between for what’s coming, i think. also, i’m not gonna lie. this story is sort of losing steam - i don’t have as much time to write as i would like and when i do, i don’t really know where to take it. i’ve written up to chapter 8 but past that i’m sort of struggling. i’ll try to see what i can do in the coming days, though ;) thank you to everyone who has supported this fic so far! leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end. until the next!


	6. be careful you don’t get burned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mj returns, but ned is gone. what does this mean? peter and mj alone, of course. and what does that mean? well, read and find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for your lovely comments that i have been receiving on this story as of late, your words mean a lot! also, my story "come get it, tiger" just hit 2000 hits. of course, my most popular story is the one with smut. yall are freaky for that. nonetheless, i appreciate all the support that i've been getting! here's chapter 6! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish!

Peter bops his head in time to the song that’s playing in his headphones, lazily humming the lyrics as he collects his binders from his locker. He’s in the process of pulling one out when one of his earbuds is pulled out and he hears a voice say casually, “Hey, loser.”

He yelps rather unattractively, dropping his binders on the floor and jumping a few feet away, eyes bulging as he looks at his assailant. They recede into his skull somewhat when he realizes it’s MJ. She’s leaning against the wall of lockers, shaking silently with laughter.

“MJ!” He admonishes, feeling his cheeks heat up a few degrees. “What the hell?”

She sobers up slightly, at least enough to reply coherently. “Just wanted to say hey, Parker, since you seemed so excited to see me today.” At that, her eyebrows wiggle a little bit, and Peter almost chokes, knowing he’s red as a tomato. 

“Um,” he laughs nervously to expel some of the pent-up awkwardness, “Okay. But you didn’t have to scare the hell out of me, you know?” He fiddles with the string of his hoodie as she tilts her head, pondering his statement.

“Oh, no,” she disagrees, shaking her head. “I definitely did. It was worth hearing you scream like a little girl.” Peter smiles nervously, looking down at his feet. 

When he looks back up, he hears a little bit of rustling and MJ comes back into view, holding all of his binders outstretched in her hands. She raises an eyebrow, waiting for him to take them. Frowning, he reaches out to grab them and she lets her arms go slack, falling back at her sides. “You didn’t have to do that,” Peter assures her, but she shrugs.

“Least I could do for scaring the shit out of you,” she replies, grinning. Peter scoffs in mild amazement. He’s almost, _ almost _ offended, but he knows MJ means no harm. And he’s sure that to anyone who might have observed the spectacle found it pretty damn funny. So he gives her a pass, and chuckles. 

“Let’s go, nerd. We have to get to Chem, and I’m not about to be late for a second time because of you,” she says, already turning on her heel and starting to walk down the hall, hips subtly swaying with each step, like a model on the runway, and now might be a good time to stop staring at that… region! Yeah, Peter, why don’t you look up?

He jogs after her, pointedly keeping his gaze above her shoulders. When he falls into step with her, she turns her head slightly in his direction and words start to tumble out of his mouth.

“So, um, did you have a cold or something? Or, like, the flu?” Peter asks, and there’s a hint of a smile playing on her lips, and he remembers that yeah, she’s pretty. Crap. The words, _ the _words, are on the tip of his tongue every time he sees her nowadays - all it would take would be a moment of weakness or unpreparedness and his feelings would be out for her to do with them as she sees fit.

“Just your run-of-the-mill fever,” she replies, shrugging. “Nothing cool, like tuberculosis or something.” Peter smiles. Of course MJ would think diseases are “cool.” 

“Would you prefer you had that? Tuberculosis?” He elaborates. She looks at him, frowning slightly like she’s trying to find the answer to a question that she has asked herself in her head.

“Well, no, but it sounds way cooler than ‘I had a body temperature of 100.4,’ because that kind of thing happens to everyone,” she says, twirling the string of her hoodie between her fingers. “Speaking of, I don’t think I’ve seen you ever get sick. What’s up with that?”

Peter swallows heavily, looking down at his feet, then smiles nervously. “Um.” How eloquent. “I don’t know, maybe I just get lucky?” He tries, then looks back up at MJ’s skeptical face.

“Uh-huh,” she says disbelievingly. He doesn’t blame her. He really is a terrible liar.

He busies himself on focusing on the door to the Chemistry lab, his escape from this feeling that is sending chills down his spine, the cause of it being the mysterious, scary girl walking next to him.

“Well, at least we won’t be late,” Peter points out, trying to change the topic. He pulls on the hem of his sweater to smoothen it out.

Thankfully, she bites. “Yeah, imagine what Flash would say.” Peter smiles as he remembers the last time they came in late together, and the subsequent embarrassment he felt. Eh. Let Flash think what he wants.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that one time was enough to give him ammunition for a while. And he already has it out for me.”  
She ponders this as they take the final steps towards the door of the lab, pausing outside. Peter stops with her as they stand in front of the doorway.

“I’m pretty sure you could kick his ass if you wanted to,” she says casually. “Those muscles can’t be useless.”

With that, she leaves him in her dust, spluttering like a fish on land in the doorway. He’s sure she’s smirking in that way of hers, the way that says _ I win. _

Eventually, he finds it within himself to enter the classroom, and thankfully, the bell hasn’t rung yet, so not everyone is present. Namely, Flash. Peter lets out a deep breath as he takes a seat at the table where he and Ned usually sit. Searching the room, though he doesn’t know for what, he’s a bit surprised when in their scan of the room, his eyes land on MJ who sits a few rows directly behind him.

She’s aggressively scratching something into a page of her sketchbook, hunched over it like she wants to hide whatever’s in there from the world. Maybe it’s like a diary. Everyone has the things that they want to keep private. 

But MJ hides so much. Peter wishes he knew more about her, but he knows that she’s not just going to open like a book for him to read every page. He has his own secrets, ones that he really doesn’t want just anybody to know. He’s sure that she’s actually such an interesting person, but she doesn’t show that to people enough. 

He’s been staring for far too long, he realizes as he escapes his thoughts. Right as he does so, MJ looks up at him from her book, and her eyes widen in surprise. Quickly, she averts her gaze to the side, and Peter, swallowing, does the same. 

Shit. He really needs to get better at observing people without getting caught. It’s too bad that the subject of his observations is also the person who would give the best tips. Bit of a pickle there.

Finally, the bell rings, and everyone settles into their seats. Peter knows Flash is sitting not so far away, but he says nothing about MJ. Thank God.

Ned hasn’t shown up yet, and he’s never late. So either he's dead, or sick as a dog. Peter shifts uncomfortably in his seat, feeling his absence strongly like he usually does because Ned is really his only friend and they suffer if one of them isn’t present - both Ned and Peter.

Oh, great. They’re doing an experiment, and Ned is his usual lab partner, and you’re not allowed to do the labs alone. As the teacher calls them up to collect materials, she notices that Peter has no partner, then she looks beyond him at MJ, who sits at a table where the seat next to her is also empty.

Well, isn’t that just great?

It’s wonderful, actually. Peter is excited to work with MJ on something. But there’s still that lingering nervousness that will never leave as long as he’s in the same room as her.

“You and Miss Jones will work together, seeing as your lab partners are both absent,” his teacher says, peering at him over her glasses that sit low on her nose. “Get to it.” 

Peter nods, and when he’s nearly done setting up the materials for the lab, MJ saunters up to him, plopping down her folder and lab sheet on the table. “Guess we’re working together on this, loser,” she says, smirking. Peter looks at her, his hands still laying out the different things that the teacher had told them to take, and he smiles. 

“Yeah,” is all he can say. When he goes to take the last material out of his hand, all he feels is the skin of his palm. He looks down at the table, and everything is there. He can hear MJ chuckling quietly to herself as he flounders slightly. 

“Okay, let’s get started, huh?” She says, taking the tongs and picking up a chunk of metal with them, turning the knob on the Bunsen burner to get the gas going. Apparently, that’s the lab - setting things on fire and seeing what colors they turn.

“I feel like this is actually an enormous safety hazard,” Peter says, and she nods, her eyebrows furrowed as she focuses on flicking the igniter. She tries a couple of times but, though there are sparks, no flames come from them. 

She groans irritably, slapping her hands down on the table and throwing her head up, mumbling, “Damn it.”

Instinctively, Peter reaches out for the igniter, which is still gripped tightly by MJ’s hand. His hand lands on top of hers, and he smiles reassuringly as her head snaps up and she looks at him curiously. “I got it,” he says quietly, squeezing her hand gently. God, what is he doing? He’s crossing, like, so many boundaries right now. 

But then her grip on the igniter loosens, and she lets him take it as her hand snakes out from under his, gripping the edge of the table. Peter picks it up and holds it over the gas that is making the air vibrate, the way it will when it’s crazy hot and when you look into the distance it looks like a mirage the way everything is shaking.

With one easy flick, Peter sure that he almost breaks the igniter, a flame roars to life, and he jerks his hand away as the fire sparks up from the burner. It’s a huge flame, actually, and Peter drops the igniter so that he can turn the knob back down to shrink it. 

“I didn’t realize it was going to be that big,” he hears MJ say beside him, and when he looks to his right at her he sees that she’s ducked her head in embarrassment.

“It’s okay, MJ,” Peter reassures, now focusing on picking up the tongs again and lighting the metal with the flame. Gingerly, he holds them over it and his pulse quickens when the rock ignites, the flame a bright red, not the orange of a typical fire, but the red of velvet. The red that reminds him of his Spider-Man suit. 

“Whoa,” he hears MJ breathe next to him. She’s so right. “That’s actually, like, really cool.” Peter nods in agreement, mouth slightly agape as he continues to hold the tongs over the flame. 

They set a few more metal rocks on fire, oohing and ahhing at the colors they make. MJ particularly likes the blue-green that copper produces. Peter notices in the way her eyes light up at the sight of it, not unlike the metal as it is ignited by the gas of the flame - bright and beautiful. 

Their fingers brush against each other each time they pass the tongs between them, picking up each different type of metal that they were provided with and taking notes on what color they turned and how that matches up to the electron spectrum. Peter feels sparks fly - no pun intended - but he’s sure that it’s only one-sided. 

They finish up the lab just as the bell rings, and quickly they sling their bags over their shoulders and walk over to the teacher to hand in their worksheets. The teacher eyes them curiously as they put their papers in the turn-in bin and muses, “You two worked well together today. I might consider making you assigned lab partners.”

Peter sputters as MJ does something similar, unable to form a complete refusal with words. “That’s- um-”

The teacher simply chuckles and waves them off. “Go on to your next class. You’ll be late if you don’t leave now.” 

Silently, uncomfortably, they nod and walk in stride with each other out of the classroom. Peter’s going left and she’s going right, so they have to part ways. Peter smiles at her nervously and she mirrors him, and they give each other small, bashful waves and “see you later”s. 

Lunch is also glaringly absent of Ned, and Peter feels lonely again as he sits down at their table with his tray that holds something that he thinks is _ supposed _to be macaroni and cheese, but it’s slightly green and almost makes him gag. He settles for the 2% milk and apple slices in the plastic bag (thank you, Michelle Obama). 

His moping is interrupted by the clang of another tray on the table, and when his eyes trail up the arms of the person who holds it he sees the denim jacket that MJ likes to wear. The girl settles easily into the table across from him as if they’ve been sitting together for years. 

“Hey,” she greets, and Peter responds in kind while munching on an apple slice. She groans when she observes the yellow-green lump that is the mac and cheese provided by the cafeteria ladies. “I can’t believe this is legal.”

Peter snorts out a little bit of milk, then reddens deeply, wiping furiously at his face with one of the sandpaper-like napkins. The feeling is intensified by his heightened senses, making him feel like he’s grating his skin against it. He makes a face.

MJ snorts herself at his reaction, but lucky for her, there’s no milk to come out of her nose. “Smooth, Parker,” she says, ripping open her package of apple slices and taking a tentative nibble. She hums in appreciation of the fact that they’re palatable and takes another, larger, bite.

“God, that was nasty. I’m sorry you had to witness that,” Peter replies, still a little pink. 

“I don’t mind,” she says, shrugging. He notices now that she has yet to pull the book that she always has out of her bag and start reading. She’s actually focused on this exchange that she’s having with him, and his heart warms slightly at the realization. “It was funny.”

“Shut up,” he says, staring deeply at the “mac and cheese” because he can’t meet her eyes right now. It really is disgusting - is that a _hair_? Nope. Pass on all cafeteria food for the foreseeable future. Besides the apple slices, of course. Those are the only things he can trust.

“Do you miss Thing 2?” She asks, and Peter looks up at her from the yellow-green sludge on his tray. He frowns. “Leeds,” she elaborates. His eyebrows raise in realization, but also because, really? She compares him and Ned to those annoying little blue-haired monsters from Cat in the Hat? Don’t get him wrong, he loves Dr. Seuss, had since he was a toddler, but that’s just the _ slightest _bit demeaning.

“Does that make me Thing 1?” is what he comes up with instead of _ That was kind of rude. _

She nods, and the corner of her mouth pulls up into a half-smile. “You’re catching on,” she says, pointing her apple slice at him and then chomping at it heartily. 

“I can’t believe you would compare me to those little dudes from _ Cat in the Hat, _” he says, voicing his earlier thoughts and trying his best to look a combination of miffed and insulted. 

It sort of works. Her smirk softens and then completely disappears. Her posture becomes more rigid and when she finishes chewing the apple slice and swallows it, she mumbles “Sorry,” as her eyes stare holes into the table.

He frantically tries to restore the lighthearted tone of the conversation, realizing he’d just speared it with his statement: “No, I mean, it was funny. It’s okay, MJ. I’m sorry.”

“You apologize a lot,” she says, and the smirk is back, and it makes Peter relax, his shoulders falling again as he lets out a tense breath. He smiles appreciatively, while still being surprised by her observation.

“I guess I do,” he admits, scratching at the base of the back of his neck. She’s living up to her reputation as an observant person, but instead of it being creepy or weird, he finds it endearing. It’s cute and it makes him feel funny, the way she notices the little things about him. Sure, it might be a _ little _odd, but he likes it that there’s someone who actually pays attention to him aside from Ned or May. 

They smile faintly at each other and share idle conversation for the rest of lunch, until the bell rings and they’re forced to separate again, heading to their own classes. 

But before they head in opposite directions, they do the same small smile and wave that they did earlier, and it feels normal and sweet, and that realization makes some blood rush to Peter’s head, and he’s smiling a bit too hard as he walks to English.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoyed this update! now, a little bit about the schedule – i've been falling behind in terms of writing a little bit because i have a shitload of homework and when i don't i'm exhausted and unmotivated, so updates might slow down a little bit. thank you all again for reading and supporting this story, though! leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end :) until the next!


	7. look at the way she looks at you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter's third visit to the diner brings plenty of flirting and one (1) new discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these chapters are really creeping up on me, man. feels like i just posted the last update yesterday. but here we are! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish! enjoy chapter seven! much fun stuff in this one!

The week comes and goes with little fanfare besides Ned’s return, which really just warrants a slightly more enthusiastic handshake and then things are back to normal. Peter tells him about the day he had been absent when it had been just himself and MJ - everything. He notices the shit-eating grin on Ned’s face but doesn’t even comment on it because he likes MJ already and he doesn’t care.

“Then she said she might make us assigned lab partners,” he says at one point.

Ned frowns. “Wait. But then we won’t be partners anymore!” Peter smiles in a most impish way because he knows what he and MJ being lab partners means. 

“Dude,” he says, chuckling. “Who’s MJ’s lab partner?” 

Ned’s eyes widen and then he shakes his head vehemently, his cheeks sporting a blush. “No way. No way.”

Peter laughs openly now. “_ Yes, _way! Dude, this is great!”

_ He and Betty really needed the push in the right direction anyway, _he thinks as Ned splutters some more about how he won’t know how to act in front of her.

Peter decides to visit MJ on Saturday this time, still fussing over his outfit and hair like he did last time, still feeling those same nerves, but something feels more comfortable about this time. MJ feels more like his friend than just some girl he has a crush on. 

He walks out of his apartment with a quick goodbye and kiss on the cheek for May, wearing black Vans, blue jeans, and a plain black t-shirt that he _ thinks _accentuates his muscles because he remembers when she had commented on them and he kind of wants to hear her do it again.

Besides, he likes having muscles, no matter how little he gets to show them off. So he walks to the diner, feeling too confident for his own good. 

Of course, all that goes out the window when he pushes open the door of the diner and, again, sees her working the counter. That familiar pit is in his stomach and he does one four-seven-eight breath to settle his nerves.

She sees him before he walks up and calls out, “Look who’s back.”

A bit of blood rushes to his face, but dutifully, he walks up to the counter and hoists himself up onto one of the stools. MJ’s right there across from him when he looks up to find her, and when their eyes meet she smiles, a small, pretty up-quirk of both sides of her mouth, and asks, “Same as last time?” 

Peter nods uncertainly because she’s _warm _today. That sounds rude, but he’s never seen her act like this. As she walks over to the cook’s window with his order on her notepad, Peter smiles. He doesn’t know what’s caused this change and he wants to ask, so when she returns to her post in front of him, arms crossed as she rests them on the counter, he does exactly that.

“You’re in a good mood,” he observes. She tilts her head as she looks at him, the strands of hair that have escaped her lazy bun hanging from her head, eyebrows creasing slightly as she ponders his statement.

“I guess,” she concedes, shrugging. “I dunno why,” she adds when she sees his mouth fall open as he starts to ask the question.

“Okay,” he says, smiling gently at her. She nods, and he notices her gaze trail slightly downward, toward his biceps, and Peter has to bite his lip to contain a grin because his plan worked. However, there’s also the fact that a girl is looking at his muscles, a bit unabashedly if he does say so himself. So he blushes, and says, “Um…”

She finally realizes that she’s been caught staring and clears her throat, brushing a strand of hair that’s fallen between her eyes behind her ear. 

“Have you drawn anything lately?” He suddenly asks, partially to save both of them from further embarrassment and partially because he wonders if she doesn’t just draw people in crisis.

She looks grateful for the change in topic, shoulders visibly un-tensing, as she rises to her full height, arms still crossed over her chest. “I mean, yeah.”

“Like what?” 

“More people in crisis, for one,” she replies, grinning. “I’ve also drawn some… flowers. A couple of roses.”

Peter _hmm_s. “That’s cool. Are they your favorite flower?” He almost wants to comment on the irony that MJ, a pretty girl who deals in barbs and keeping her distance from people, likes roses, a pretty flower that has thorns in order to keep predators from eating it. But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t think she’d appreciate the joke.

“Nah,” she says, waving her hand to the side. “That would be incredibly mainstream of me, and I make a point of avoiding conformity at every possible opportunity.”

Peter can’t stop his smile from forming because that’s _such _an MJ thing to say. He should have known she would never be so “basic” as to prefer red roses, the most mainstream of all flowers, over another that probably possesses an underrated beauty, just like she does. 

He needs to stop comparing her to flowers. _ Do not think about any “deflowering” metaphors. Do not. _

“I told Ned about how we might become assigned lab partners,” Peter says, drumming his fingers against his thigh. One of her eyebrows climbs about a half-mile up her forehead, and he realizes what he’s said. Then, catching himself, he continues, “Because, like, that would make him and Betty partners, too.”

Appeased, she smirks and nods. “Oh, yeah, it’s all coming together.”

It’s Peter’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Was that an _ Emperor’s New Groove _reference?” He asks, impressed. She looks almost surprised to be caught, her eyes widening and hands tightening their grips on her arms that are crossed over her chest.

Then, she whistles appreciatively. “Not bad, Parker. I never pegged you for a Disney fan.”

Peter scoffs and splays his hand across his chest in mock hurt. “I _ love _ Disney. May and I have a huge collection.”

She chuckles. “What’s your-”

“Cheeseburger!” A voice calls from Peter’s right, and their gazes snap together to the cook who’s becoming impatient with each second that MJ isn’t walking up to him and taking the plate that has Peter’s cheeseburger on it. 

Glancing at him apologetically, she jogs over to the cook and takes the plate out of his hands quickly. 

Peter watches her, as he’s done a lot of that recently, and everything about the way she’s moving looks rushed, like she doesn’t want to be doing her job, but instead wants to be talking to him. He lets the thought please him for all of a second before coming back to the real world. She doesn’t think of him like that. She doesn’t feel the same as he does. Maybe she doesn’t like being a waitress. After all, she _had _told him that she was “just in it for the money” and completely serious when she said so, so that has to be it.

Then she’s back with his burger and Coke, setting the plate down in front of him with a half-smile and then standing rigidly like she’s waiting anxiously for him to take a bite. Peter flexes a little bit, because he can, as he reaches for the burger and lifts it up to his mouth, taking a hearty bite. She scoffs.

“I don’t think it’ll ever get old, how big your bites are,” she says, resting her chin on her joined fists as she watches him chew. “How do you even breathe when you eat like that?”

Peter swallows, allowing himself to chuckle as he says, “I have a nose.” He almost laughs harder as he watches her cheeks redden. But then he realizes he just made her look dumb, so he wipes the smile off of his face and waits for her to reply.

“Right,” she says, stroking her jaw with her thumb as she glances off to the side.

“Does it bother you, watching people eat meat?” he asks, because he remembers the last time he had offered her a bite of his burger, she had refused due to the fact that she was a vegetarian. She probably still is, unless she just changed her mind over the span of a week.

“Why?” She asks, frowning, leaning forward towards him, and though their faces are still a few feet apart he feels as if the temperature inside the diner just rose a few degrees.

“Because you’re vegetarian,” he points out, glancing past her at the wall behind them. 

“Oh. Yeah,” she says, sounding a bit suspicious, making him question whether she had even said it. She had a way of doing that, staring at him like he’d said the wrong thing, making him uneasy, never sure of himself whenever she was around. “No. I’m not one of those annoying radical vegetarians who try to convert everyone they ever meet to vegetarianism or just flex the fact that I’m so much better than them for having less of an environmental impact than they do.” She pauses. “I just keep that stuff on the inside.”

“You keep a lot of stuff on the inside,” he says before he can stop himself, and the instant he lets them hang in the air, he wants to bite them back, because he can see hurt flash in her eyes and she visibly withdraws back into herself. _ Oh, God, no, no no no - _

“I’m gonna go… take some orders,” she excuses herself lamely, but he can’t blame her. What the hell. He’s such a dick.

“Okay,” he says more to himself than to her, then proceeds to run his hand over his face in shame because it was not his place to say something like that, at all. 

He consoles himself by taking a bite out of his burger because after all, it is delicious, but it tastes different when MJ isn't there to watch him scarf it down. It’s a stupid, lonely burger. He finishes his drink too, then sits in silence, trying really, really hard not to turn around and watch her avoid him. 

But he knows that he has to ask _ her _for the check, and he can’t bear to leave the restaurant with MJ feeling resentful of him. Thus, he begins to draft a long apology in his mind, mouthing some parts of it, until he feels secure enough in the speech to actually go through with it.

Finally, he swivels around in the stool, turning 180 degrees and his eyes scan the diner for her. She’s just finishing taking a family of three’s order, and she waves at the little girl that sits next to her father as she walks away from their table. With his heightened senses, he hears the mother say to the father, “What a sweet girl,” and the man hums his agreement. 

Peter smiles as he listens, but then he remembers that MJ is walking in his general direction, so he calls her name, just loud enough so that she can hear but not too loud to the point of being abrasive to the ambiance of the diner. Her head snaps up so that her eyes meet his, and she sighs. Peter tries for a weak smile.

She walks up to the counter and ushes up the little divider thing so that she can get behind it, and beckons him with a hand to the register, eyes on the cash machine. 

Uncertainly, he lifts himself off of the stool and walks slowly to the register until he’s face-to-face with her. Still not eye-to-eye, though, because she’s still not looking at him, and Peter feels like a dick. That’s probably her goal, honestly. 

“MJ,” he tries, and she glances up at him for an instant. It’s a start. “I’m sorry for overstepping like that. It wasn’t-”

“It’s okay, dork,” she says, trying for her casual smirk, but to Peter, it looks forced. He doesn’t know when he became able to decipher her facial expressions, but he’s glad because it makes it easier to communicate what he says next.

“No, it’s not,” he insists, and that makes her look up at him for longer, eyes slightly widened. “I can tell it isn’t. So just…” He runs his hand through his hair and glances down at the counter for a moment. Then his eyes find hers again with what he hopes is a sincere look. “It wasn’t okay for me to say something like that. I get it, you’re a private person, and you keep things to yourself because you want to. I didn’t mean to say it in such a… rude way. I’m sorry.”

Her look softens, and then the corner of her mouth pulls upward like she can’t help it, and she punches him gently on the arm.

“Seriously, it’s okay,” she insists, but this time it isn’t dismissive, but instead genuine. Peter smiles then, too. “I appreciate your apology, though. It, uh,” she picks at the sleeve of her t-shirt, “means a lot.”

Peter’s beaming by now because he can tell that such an act was a big step for MJ, and he feels special just for bearing witness to it. “Of course, MJ,” he says, brushing his hand over the spot where MJ had punched him. He hands a ten-dollar bill to her then, says “Keep the change” and salutes her lazily. 

“See you Monday, Peter,” she says, looking him in the eyes with a soft gaze, and Peter feels heat rush to his cheeks because she sounds so _gentle_. So unlike her. And she’s talking to _ him _ like that. Whoa.

“Bye, MJ,” he says, then he turns on his heel, prepared to walk out of the diner still with the huge blush on his face until just before he’s about to push the door open, he feels someone tap him on the shoulder. He swivels back around to look for MJ, but she’s busy taking someone’s order. He looks down at a short woman who’s looking up at him with a glint in her eye that makes him nervous.

“You should make a move, kid,” she says, and Peter’s frowning because _ does he know her? _ He knows the answer is no, so who does she think she is? “She always looks so antsy when she’s waiting for you to come and then once you leave, she never stops smiling.”

Peter blinks. No way that’s true. “Look at her now,” the woman insists, resting a hand on his shoulder and pointing to where MJ stands. When Peter looks at her, he sees her smiling absently as she leans against one of the empty tables. Peter feels his cheeks heat up again. Damn it. The woman is right and it makes him feel giddy, but there’s still the doubt that always weasels its way into his brain whenever he imagines possibly doing something about his stupid feelings. “Whenever you’re ready, kid,” she says, patting him once, roughly, on the shoulder and walking away to seat a lone man that has just entered the diner.

Peter shakes his head and pushes open the door, and the jangle of the bell as he exits is deafening.

_ Whenever you’re ready. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoyed that! we're almost there, folks. probably will only have to suffer through two more chapters before the payoff, but i hope yall are enjoying the buildup! i really appreciate everyone's continued support of this fic! until the next!


	8. you’re just holding yourself back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter wonders how the hell he's gonna put the moves on mj. ned makes the first move in typical leeds fashion. also, mj's been acting weirdly... weird. what's up with that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's chapter 8 fellas! hope you enjoy! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you so desire! thank you for your continued support of this fic! without further ado...

What that woman had told him at the diner was the only thing he’d been able to think about for the entirety of Sunday and the early morning of Monday before he went to school.

Of course, the first thing he did when he returned from the diner on Saturday? Told May. Everything. From her not-so-well-hidden glances at his muscles, to her Disney joke, to his small slip-up and the subsequent awkwardness, to his apology and her acceptance of it, to the woman who had whispered to him as he watched MJ smile at the thought of _ him. _

Everything.

She’d responded in kind to his enthusiasm, her eyes shining with mischief and knowledge, because apparently she’d known from the jump that Michelle liked him, from that one time she had encountered her at the diner. 

He doesn’t know where May got the ability to read people like that, and he doesn’t want to think about how much it reminds him of MJ’s observational skills. He wants to believe her, so badly, but he’s feeling the same mixture of amazement and denial concerning the revelation that MJ likes him too, that he did when he discovered the same thing about Liz.

No way MJ likes him. It’s not the truth.

So he definitely doesn’t look at MJ like he’s trying to find the answer to his question, with a bit of a frown, that he only realizes is rude when she frowns back at him over her book. 

“What’s that look for, Parker?” She asks, and the crunching sounds of Ned’s Doritos come to a halt in order for the confrontation to carry some weight.

“Um, nothing,” he says, trying for an innocent smile. “I just… spaced out for a second.”

This doesn’t pacify her, not completely, but she just looks confused now instead of bothered. “Um…” she picks up her book again as her fingers start to drum out a rhythm on the table, possibly needing a distraction with her fidgeting hands. 

She doesn’t finish her thought, but Peter prefers it this way. Now he can consciously think about _ not _looking at her the way he just did because that’s probably for the better. 

Instead, he busies himself with swirling his cafeteria-provided plastic fork around the peas on his tray – probably the only palatable thing on the menu today. If he ever gets rich, he’s going to personally pay the mayor to make school lunches gourmet and five-star caliber food, because this stuff is just… appalling.

There’s a tense silence hanging over the trio as they all envelop themselves in their separate tasks, but Peter silently thanks the powers that be when Ned starts crunching down on his Doritos again and MJ huffs in amusement, saying, “Crunch any louder and you’ll be the number one cause of noise pollution.”

Ned has been getting better at countering her snark, so he shrugs, and while still chewing loudly on his Dorito, he says, “At least I’ll be number one at something.” Then he frowns because that came out a bit more depressing than he intended it to be. 

However, this spurs one of MJ’s rare “nice” moments, and as she still focuses 95% of her attention on the book in front of her, she spares the remaining 5% on muttering, “You’re number one on the list of guys Betty Brant likes, too.”

Peter snorts and he watches Ned turn a brilliant shade of pink. “Shut. Up,” he says through gritted teeth, but eventually, he’s starting to smile and then he can’t stop himself, making it a full grin, yet one that still shows how shy he is about the whole Betty thing.

“You should make a move, Ned,” Peter says, grateful that the attention’s no longer fully on him. But then Ned fixes him with that same grin, and he’s more than a little caught off-guard when Ned says:

“You should, too.”

Peter’s mouth falls open slightly, but he closes it quickly enough that it’s reasonable to believe MJ didn’t catch it. But nothing about MJ is reasonable. She sees everything. 

Thankfully, she passes on the opportunity to tease Peter about his stupid fish mouth and instead says to Ned, “I’ll give you five dollars if you go up to Betty right now and ask her out.”

Ned whistles. “Five dollars? Eh…”

“Think of all the Arizonas you could buy with that, dude!” Peter enthuses, trying to get him to go through with it, because it needs to happen, like, a week ago.

“I guess you have a point…” Ned trails, still not completely convinced. 

“Leeds, do it or _ I’ll _tell her you have a gigantic crush on her.” At that, Ned’s eyes widen almost comically, and he rockets up from his seat at the table, almost tripping over the bench. MJ chuckles, then she waves her hand off to the side. “I didn’t mean–”

But he’s gone, stalking off to the table with a look in his eye that’s almost intimidating. “Look what you’ve done,” Peter tsks, but without malice, because he wants to see where this goes. Obviously, he’s going to be able to hear what Ned says, but he can’t tip that off to MJ because then she’ll get suspicious. So instead, he pretends that he can only watch like she’s doing right now.

“I seriously didn’t mean it. Am I really that intimidating?” She asks, but Peter’s focus is actually not on her for once. Ned has almost reached Betty’s table, where she’s sitting with two friends, engaged in quiet, casual conversation. 

“Sometimes,” he says offhandedly, and now it looks like Ned is saying something. He tunes in with his enhanced hearing, filtering out the din of conversation surrounding them and honing in on his friend’s voice. 

“Hey, Betty,” he says, and so far his voice hasn’t wavered. Given, he’s only spoken two words, but that’s already a step up from where he was before.

“Hi, Ned,” she says, looking up at him from her seated position, blushing slightly. Peter smiles absently – how can’t Ned tell yet?

“They’re so gone for each other,” he hears MJ say as she, too, observes the pair. “God, it’s sickening. In the best way.”

“I didn’t know you were a romantic, MJ,” Peter jokes, and then he feels a light shove on his arm. He knows it’s her and he can imagine the miffed smile that’s currently on her face as a reaction to his joke.

“Yeah, well, those two are good together,” she mutters quietly like she’s ashamed to say it.

Peter nods in agreement. “I know.”

“So listen, uh… I was wondering if…” Ned’s voice returns to Peter’s ears then, and he excitedly focuses on his and Betty’s conversation once more.

“Yes.” 

“No, wait, lemme finish, it’s just… uh… Do you want to–”

“Yes, Ned,” Betty repeats, looking a mixture of elated and exasperated. “I’ll text you, okay?”

“Oh!” Ned says, fidgeting furiously with his hands, but smiling all the same. “Okay. See you, Betty.” 

She waves at him in a way that reminds him of a posh English woman, and Peter chuckles, hearing a little bit of chatter pick up at Betty’s table and watching Ned come back to their own table with a smile threatening to split his face in half.

Peter feels one of his own forming on his features, but he embraces it, standing up before Ned sits down so they can do their handshake and Peter says to him, “All you needed was a little blackmail as motivation, huh?” 

“I guess,” Ned agrees, and then his gaze shifts to MJ, who has been sitting silently for about the last thirty seconds. She’s reading her book, Peter notices, probably to pretend she wasn’t just paying her undivided attention to Ned. “So?” The boy urges. “Where’re my five bucks?” That causes MJ’s eyes to widen and she looks straight up at him from her book before she can stop herself. 

“Seriously? You only did it for the five bucks?” She asks, a bit incredulous. A bit, because it’s almost like she never lets herself fully _ feel _things, or maybe she does and is just used to repressing her emotions.

_ Psychoanalysis is not going to get you anywhere with MJ, Peter, _ he hears the voice inside of his head admonish. _ She’s a private person. No need to go any deeper than that. _

“Well, partially,” Ned admits, scratching at the back of his head. “But also because I like her. But also, seriously, I was really excited about that Arizona.”

“Well,” she says, shrugging and giving that squinty-eyed frown that she always wears when she’s trying to look like she doesn’t care, “I don’t actually have five dollars. So I just tricked you using my masterful intellect.” She’s smirking faintly by the end of that last sentence, and Peter is very amused.

Ned frowns for a moment, but then it dissipates and he smiles serenely. “Eh. I should have done it before anyway.”

Peter gently shoves Ned’s shoulder (yes, _ gently, _ he could probably toss him across the lunchroom if he wasn’t careful) and as he laughs, he whines, _ “Now _ you admit it?”

They all laugh together, then settle back into their seats and enjoy the rest of their lunch period.

When decathlon practice is over, Peter is getting ready to head out with Ned, filing out through the doorway, when he hears a quiet, “Hold up.” Obliging, he pauses mid-step and turns on his heel to find MJ packing up the last of her flashcards and already walking in his direction.

“What’s up, MJ?” Peter asks, grabbing Ned’s arm and making him turn around as well. The other boy makes a slight sound of protest but goes silent at the sight of the girl who’s blowing a strand of hair out of her face, arms crossed over her chest with a book held tightly within them.

“I’m walking with you nerds,” she announces like she expects no argument, and Peter doesn’t even think of providing one. 

“Cool. I was getting bored of Peter anyway,” Ned says, and Peter frowns, smacking him gently on the arm and feeling a little bit hurt. He realizes that he might not have held himself back enough when Ned grimaces in pain but does a decent job of hiding it.

MJ doesn’t compound upon his embarrassment, which he’s thankful for. Instead, she falls into step with the two “nerds,” as she almost lovingly calls them by now.

Peter walks between Ned and MJ, wondering how to break the ice when MJ does, surprising him, Ned, and even herself, if the widening of her eyes after she speaks is any indication. “You dorks done anything fun lately?” 

“Oh!” Ned exclaims. “We built a new Lego set the other day. Two thousand pieces,” he adds proudly at the end, expecting MJ to “ooh” or “aah” at the sheer number, but Peter expects her to scoff in the way that she does whenever either of them brings up something related to Lego, or Star Wars, or Lego Star Wars. 

(Ned owns the games on his Wii and whenever they want to have a nostalgia attack they turn on the archaic machine and play to their hearts’ content.)

“Cool,” she says, and Peter waits for her to continue, but nothing else comes from the mouth of the tall, usually quippy and snarky girl whose jokes and barbs he’s only recently gotten used to. 

When he glances at her profile, he sees that she’s looking down at the ground, her eyes holding a fog of emotions he can’t even begin to see through. Something is bothering her.

“Read any good books lately?” He asks, trying to get her to perk up, and it works: Her gaze lifts from the pavement and to his eyes for a sweet, satisfying moment, then they turn back so that she’s looking ahead. 

“Yeah, um. I’m on my third go-round of_ Pride and Prejudice.” _

“Nice,” Peter encourages. “That’s May’s favorite book.” 

Her eyes light up, but as if by the order of some great force, probably her iron will, she still won’t look at him. Peter tries his best not to feel hurt because he knows that’s not her intention. It’s all internal. She’s trying not to let whatever it is she’s feeling show for all the world to see.

The trio walks in an uncomfortable silence to the train station, and on a couple of occasions Peter or MJ will take an accidental step into the other’s path, resulting in an awkward brush against each other and a mumbled “sorry” followed by a refusal to look even remotely in their direction.

Peter hates this feeling of awkwardness, of uncertainty. He definitely wants to do something about it, but he feels like there’s a barrier keeping him from doing so and its name is Ned Leeds. Don’t get him wrong, he loves Ned like a brother, but this situation feels like it would be best handled if he were alone with MJ.

“Hey, MJ,” Ned says, finally breaking the deadlock, and Peter is grateful. “Just so you know, I think you’re a really good captain.”

Peter’s gaze shifts from the boy on his left to the girl on his right, and her eyes widen in surprise and a slight flush grows on her cheeks. She’s adorable. Despite all of those snarky barbs and raised eyebrows and intense, unnerving gazes she uses to hide it, she has a soft, nervous side. It’s not his favorite thing about her, because that’s not MJ at her base state – it’s almost odd to see MJ acting like this, but that doesn’t mean he has a problem with it. It’s just, he likes it when she always has a retort prepared for any possible thing someone could say to her, but now, at Ned’s unexpected compliment, she’s speechless. Peter is, to say the least, surprised. 

“Um, thanks, Leeds,” she replies haltingly. “That’s nice of you to say, or whatever.” Peter chews at his bottom lip to not grin at her response because it’s extremely _ her. _

God, how he wants to tell her how he feels. There’s no use in waiting any longer, really, because he’s just about bursting at the seams, and if she hasn’t already figured it out he’d be somewhat surprised. He needs this moment with MJ.

But it won’t come today, because they actually go in opposite directions when they reach the train station, taking different routes. Peter laments this for a moment but is grateful that the tension is gone, and he takes a deep breath for the first time in a few minutes as he watches MJ’s figure recede into the crowd alongside Ned.

“It’s time, dude,” he says just loud enough for his friend to hear.

He can see Ned grin out of his peripheral. “Hell yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! sadly, this is the last complete chapter i have up to this point, so it might take some time for the next few to get posted. thank you all for sticking with this fic so far! we're getting close, people! leave kudos and a comment if you made it to the end! until the next :)


	9. tears and spandex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mj's crying, and peter's spider-man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a bit shorter than the others. thanks for waiting! leave kudos and comment with an opinion or observation if you wish! enjoy!

Peter’s patrolling on Thursday night, after a long day of wondering what has been up with MJ for the entirety of the past week. Yeah, she’s still not done acting spacey and silent, and he and Ned have tried countless things to get her to open up or at least engage them in conversation, but nothing. Nothing has worked.

So when he’s perched on top of an apartment building, overlooking the late-afternoon scene of the city below him, with bustling streets and packed sidewalks, he gets a bit excited when he notices MJ sitting on a park bench.

That excitement fizzles out when he realizes that she’s alone, a book is discarded off to her side, the pages folded against the wood of the bench, something he’s sure she would get very angry about if her head wasn’t in her hands. 

Oh.

He tunes his hearing, and just barely, he can hear the faint sound of crying over the honking of horns and passing conversations. Yeah, he’s heading down there. He knows it’s not smart to do so because of the risk of not being able to conceal his identity from the ever-observant MJ, but nobody deserves to cry alone. 

Peter stylishly flips off of the edge of the building’s roof, shooting out a web to a streetlight and swinging out under it. In an instant, he’s standing on the other side of the street, in a typical superhero landing pose (sue him if he likes to feel cool every now and then), with MJ still sitting on the bench sobbing quietly into her palms. 

Right, he actually came over here for something. Peter rises to his full height, which isn’t much compared to the girl in front of him, but whatever. He pointedly clears his throat, feeling like a jerk, and her head rises quickly from her hands.

Her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, widen at the sight of him, and she wipes at her face furiously to hide the evidence of her crying, but it’s a fruitless attempt. Both her hands fall limp into her lap, and her voice is hard when she speaks, but still carries a note of shakiness from her previous sobbing.

“Spider-Man,” she identifies him. Peter nods. “What are you doing here?” 

He can’t say “wanted to check in on my friend,” because  _ duh. _ So he settles for a neutral explanation that won’t give too much away. “Saw – heard you crying and wanted to see what was going on.”  _ Smooth, Parker. _

“Oh,” she simply says, sniffling. “Well, I appreciate the concern, um, sir,” she says, her voice still wavering, “but I feel like there are more pressing matters at hand.”

Peter cocks his head to the side, frowning, though he knows she can’t see it under the mask (and thank God for the mask right now). “Like what?”

She scoffs wetly at his question, wiping at her eyes again. “Like, muggings or car crashes, or whatever.”

“That’s okay,” Peter responds dismissively. “I don’t see any muggers or crashing cars. Besides, I’m the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This kind of stuff is under my purview, too.”

“I didn’t know Spider-Man knew SAT vocabulary,” she says appreciatively, her brows furrowing. The normal MJ is starting to peek through, but that means she’s just putting her walls back up. Peter doesn’t want her to live behind walls when she doesn’t have to, when she has people willing to help – like him. 

Then again, she doesn’t know it’s Peter under the mask. But if she did, he wouldn’t be surprised. If he wants her to open up, he needs to show her than she can trust him.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” He asks, ignoring her previous statement (although  _ yes, _ he’d been brushing up on his vocabulary). He settles into the bench, resting his arm on the top of it and leaning his head into his hand as he gazes at her. 

She crosses her arms over her chest and leans forward, looking down at the ground between their feet. “I don’t doubt you’re a great guy or whatever, but I don’t even know who you are.”

Peter nods in acknowledgment because his prediction had just been proven correct. It makes sense to him. But he’s still going to push because it hurts him to see MJ hurt. “I get that,” he agrees. “But sometimes it feels good to share–”

“Are you Spider-Man, friendly neighborhood therapist?” She cuts in, Peter’s mouth hanging open slightly as he was planning on  _ speaking, _ but he tells himself not to feel insulted because obviously, something is bothering her and politeness isn’t number one on her list of priorities right now.

“I’m not forcing you,” Peter says, raising his hands up in surrender. “I can just… go…” he adds, already getting up, but as his foot is raised to take the first step away from her, he feels a hand wrap around his wrist. 

He looks over his shoulder, down his nose, at the girl who has a desperate look in her eye, whose grip on him is surprisingly strong for such an unimposing figure. Sure, she’s tall, but right now she looks the smallest he’s ever seen her. It’s a bit difficult to remember that she was pushing him away because she’s scared, not because she doesn’t like him.

“Stay, please,” she asks of him, and no way in hell is he going to abandon her, mask or not. There are still tears in her eyes. He wonders what could have had this effect on the unwavering, steel will of Michelle Jones.

“Okay,” he acquiesces quietly, sitting down next to her again. “Okay.” A hint of a grateful smile tugs at her lips.

Peter shifts in his seated position, not quite looking at her but his head is angled in her general direction. He doesn’t want to seem too overbearing – he’s gotten a few comments from scared children that his eyes are “creepy.” As much as he doesn’t like to say it, MJ is a bit too close to one of those scared children right now.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he hears her mumble. It’s when he looks down at his hands again that he realizes she’s still holding him by his wrist, although her grip has loosened considerably. He decides not to comment on it.

“What’s happening?” He asks, knowing he sounds a bit too much like a dumb teenager.

“Me, using Spider-Man as my stress-ball,” she says, raising both of their hands almost to eye level, her fingers tightening around his wrist as she does so. So she doesn’t mind, he thinks. Huh. Odd how he almost forgot that he has a huge crush on her because now he’s feeling a bit of blood rush to his cheeks. 

“I don’t mind,” he says as if it means anything. She’d be doing this anyway and he’d be powerless to stop her. His feelings would have gotten the best of him no matter what.

“I know.”

That catches him off guard, and he almost splutters. He does know that his mechanical eyes widen along with his real ones at her statement, and he hears her chuckle gently. Good sign (?).

“You remind me of someone,” she says, massaging the inside of his wrist with her thumb. Peter’s breath catches as she does so, feeling chills travel up the back of his arm. What the hell?

“Do I?”

“Yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t elaborate. He can only imagine the oblique replies he’d give if she started to describe him.  _ Sounds like a cool guy. / That’s weird. / Interesting. _

They sit in comforting silence, and Peter hopes he’s telepathizing words of motivation and reassurance to her as she sniffles and wipes away the last of the tears. 

“I bottle up my emotions a lot,” she suddenly says, and Peter’s hand that had just started to fidget stills on his knee. “It’s like, a reflex. Every time I start to feel something good I beat it down with a stick because I always expect to be disappointed. And then I have moments like these where I can’t take it anymore and I just… burst.”

Peter nods in understanding. Sometimes he holds back from panic attacks during patrol and it comes back to bite him when he climbs through his window and collapses in his bed. It’s not fun – the knowledge that an attack is going to, starting to set in, the despair as his breath grows ragged and his muscles contract and when he finally escapes he finds himself on the floor in the fetal position.

“I get that,” he says, and those must have been the right words because she gives his wrist a gentle squeeze and runs her thumb over the spandex that covers it one last time.

“You should get going,” she says, finally letting go of him, and Peter instinctually rubs the spot where she had held him with his other hand. 

“Yeah,” he nods, trying his hardest not to sound dejected. He stands, dusting himself off, and as he backpedals away from her, he offers a small wave. “I’ll, uh, see you around.” With that, he backflips into the air and shoots out a web when his head is level with the ground, swinging off into the city.

Should he focus on the fact that she opened up to him and feel elated, or focus on the fact that she did it when he was behind the mask and feel confused?

Peter decides on a mixture of both. MJ took a big step, and even though it wasn’t Peter Parker she told those things to, it was a version of him. He finally understands, and that’s all that he really was after – comprehension.

When Peter returns home and collapses in his bed, suit discarded haphazardly in its ballooned form on the floor of his room, he thinks one thing, and that thing is:

_Tomorrow. No excuses._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoyed this! took a bit longer to finish this even though it was shorter because as i've said, i've been stretched for time lately. i appreciate everyone's patience a great deal! thank you all for your continued support and thoughtful comments! i swear i swear everything is about to pay off. until the next!


	10. why didn't i do this sooner?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ladies and gentlemen...  
we got 'em.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the culmination of this story is upon us! i would like to thank everyone who left positive feedback and such lovely comments on this story throughout! one month later, huh? that's what this took, and i'm so glad everyone who read this became so invested in it! leave kudos and comment with a final opinion or observation if you so wish! enjoy!

“You coming to decathlon today?”

“Nah, I have a doctor’s appointment."

Peter frowns. “Like, actually, or are you just using it as an excuse to leave?” 

Ned almost seems insulted by his assumption. “Yes, actually. I’m not the one with a ‘Stark internship.’”

Peter smiles apologetically. “Sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow, dude.” 

Ned tries his best to stay mad but ends up rolling his eyes and smiling as they complete their handshake. “Later, bro.” With that, he heads down the hallway as Peter turns around to enter the decathlon classroom.

Like last time, he’s early, but MJ has made herself comfortable in there already. She’s straightening her flashcards, fanning them between her fingers like she’s shuffling for a card game. Her hair hangs around her head like a canopy of chocolate curls, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth slightly. She hasn’t noticed him yet.

“Hey,” he says from the doorway, then lowers his shoulder to unhook his bag from his shoulder as he walks up to a seat and plops himself down into it.

“Hi,” she says. When he glances over at her, her gaze is glued to the podium. 

“You okay?”

At that, her eyes lift from the cards to meet his, and he’s a little bit surprised, so he flinches. Just a little bit. “Let’s talk later.” 

Peter swallows, and the sound of it is deafening enough in his ears that he’s half–convinced she hears it as well. “Okay,” he agrees meekly.

Peter tries to stay focused during practice as the rest of the team eventually filters into the room and they start the rapid-fire questioning that they’ve gotten used to in the time that MJ’s been captain, but ultimately fails. Every time her question is directed towards him, his response is delayed by a few seconds, and his eyes fall to his fidgeting hands that are folded on the desk. When he finally answers, she simply fixes him with a pointed stare, and he can almost hear her saying  _ Get your head in the game, loser. _

After about forty–five minutes of struggling through the questions, she finally says “Same time and place tomorrow,” and everyone rises from their seats like they were waiting for the first opportunity to leave. Maybe it was the way MJ carried herself today, like she couldn’t be bothered with them. Like there were more important things she could be doing.

Peter gets up, but he has no intention of leaving. So instead, he starts stacking chairs to give himself something to do while MJ busies herself with her supplies. 

When he’s on his fifth chair, he feels a presence at his side that almost makes him drop it to the floor. He should stop being so damn surprised by her. He has his enhanced senses for a reason, right? So why is MJ able to subvert them?

Thankfully, he stops himself from looking like a complete idiot, gently setting the chair down. She doesn’t wait for him to say “Hi” or something equally as unnecessary: “I think you’ve got something to say.”

Peter turns to her and clears his throat. She’s very pretty when she’s… pissed off. But she doesn’t look too much so — otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to have this conversation.

“Yeah, um, two things, actually,” he admits, scratching at the nape of his neck.  _ This is really happening. _

She looks almost surprised. “Two?”

“Yeah.” A pause. She cocks an eyebrow. “I really should be better at keeping secrets, and two people are already too many to know, but I owe this to you.”

She simply stares by way of response. 

“I’m Spider-Man.” With those words, Peter feels like there’s a weight just about to be lifted off of his shoulder – not quite gone yet, because her reaction is what makes it hang in the balance — and he watches for her response.

“Oh, no way, that’s crazy,” she says, wearing the most  _ bored  _ expression he’s ever seen on her. He can’t choose whether to laugh out loud or be insulted.

“I’m not even surprised that you knew,” he says, hanging his head because surely she has something to say about how he used his secret identity to take advantage of her in an emotionally compromised state, right?

“I am pretty damn observant after all,” MJ replies, and this time Peter chuckles, looking up at her slightly amused expression. 

“Aren’t you, like, mad?” He can’t help but ask.

“Why would I be mad?” She responds with a question of her own. She’s making this kind of difficult for him because all of her responses barely give him time to think of what to say next.

“I don’t know, because I lied?”

She scoffs. “If I didn’t know it was you yesterday, I would have told you to fuck off.”

Peter frowns slightly. “You technically did.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Now, what was the second thing?”

Peter swallows, because  _ oh, yeah. _ He almost forgot about this part. They seemed to be on good standing as of right now, and he’s kind of scared to see what  _ this  _ bombshell is going to do to their friendship.

Well, if he can tell her he’s Spider-Man, literally his most guarded secret, this should pale in comparison. Except, it doesn’t. He’s even more nervous about telling her he has a crush on her than telling her he’s a literal superhero. And that’s pretty damn telling.

“Right, the, uh, second thing,” he says, and he knows he’s stalling. “The second thing is that, uh…”

“You sure know how to keep a girl waiting, Parker,” she says, but there’s no malice, and her face contorts into an awkward expression as soon as the words leave her mouth. “Ugh. That was terrible. Forget I said that.”

Peter laughs nervously. “Okay.” He sucks in and lets out a deep breath. “I know this is totally unwarranted. But. For a while, I’ve… had a crush on you? A big one.”

Her mouth has fallen open a little bit, and her eyes hold a gaze that displays an emotion he  _ can’t quite  _ put a label on. “Was that a question, or a statement?” MJ asks. She actually looks… nervous. She needs him to be confident because it looks like his answer to  _ her  _ question actually matters to her more than she’s letting on. 

“Statement. Definitely a statement.” Another deep breath through his nose. “I like you, MJ. A lot.”

A smile breaks through her nervous expression with a shaky exhale. “Okay, good,” she says quietly. “Because… I like you too?”

Peter bites his lip to keep his smirk from growing  _ too  _ big. “Was that a question or a statement?” 

MJ laughs exasperatedly, good-naturedly, before doing something pretty unexpected.

She takes either side of his face in her hands, leans in, and kisses him. Gently, like she doesn’t want to break him, which makes him think,  _ Why didn’t I do this sooner?  _ And so he kisses back, his hands extricating themselves from his jean pockets and landing on her waist as he tilts his head upward so that the angle is easier.

Peter feels her smile against him for a sweet moment, and then she pulls away from him. He opens his eyes to see her wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and her cheeks look a little rosy in the sunlight that’s filtering through the blinds of the empty classroom, and her eyes, they glow like amber –

She’s beautiful. So unfathomably beautiful, that he thinks he might need to sit down and catch his breath. Thankfully, her hand on his face is grounding him and reminding him that now is  _ not  _ the time to do something of the like.

“That was enough of a statement, I think,” she says, caressing his cheek with the pad of her thumb, and Peter beams. That went roughly a million times better than he could have ever expected it to go. 

“I really like you, MJ,” he says again for good measure, unable to hold himself back.

She mock gasps: “Really? I had no idea.” Peter laughs because normally he would be a bit offended by such blatant sarcasm, but she  _ likes him. _

She makes no protest when he presses his lips to hers again to cement the idea in his head. 

Days pass, and they’ve already gone on their first official date — an after–school sandwich meeting at Delmar’s. Peter remembers being unable to hide his beaming smile as he watched her scarf down her sandwich. She originally called him a “weirdo” for doing so but she made no other complaints. In fact, she seemed to like being observed, as he was sure she was guilty of plenty of the same to him. 

He got a little bit of pickle juice on the side of his mouth at one point, and when she pointed it out to him before he could reach for a napkin to wipe it off, she beat him to it, lifting one to his face and cleaning him up herself. Peter was frozen by the action, not expecting MJ to do something so… soft. Intimate. In fact, everything about the simple act screamed  _ not MJ. _

And yet she did it anyway, silencing his curious mind and simply allowing him to focus on the pressure of the napkin against his cheek and the warmth of her fingers that brushed against his face as she picked up the last of the juice.

He liked it. He leaned into her knuckles just as she began to retract her hand with the napkin in it. She noticed and smiled shyly at him as she picked up her sandwich again. 

“Thanks,” he said after clearing his throat.

“No biggie,” she replied over her mouthful of a vegetarian sandwich. Peter almost spewed a chunk of pickle out with his laugh.

That was a good day, he thinks as he observes MJ over her splayed–open laptop and chews on the cap of his pen. The blue light of the screen makes her look pale, almost ghostly — but to him, she’s ever-present, reminding him that he’s lucky to even be in the same room as her. He still can’t believe that she likes him, even after his last visit to the diner where that woman had spilled the beans.

“Quit staring at me, loser,” MJ says, her eyes not lifting from the screen, but even he’s able to catch the telltale up-quirk of her lips at the right side of her mouth, and the little dimple that forms under it. He wants to kiss her, right there — on the corner of her mouth, where there’s proof of a smile — because now he knows that he can. Sure, she might call him dork, or sap, but that won’t deter him in the slightest, because that means she doesn’t have a problem with it. 

He tucks the thought away as he focuses once again on the flashcards splayed out in front of him on his and May’s dining table. Today, they’re studying in his apartment — in the dining room, as May had stressed when she welcomed the two with a knowing smile, at which Peter had spluttered while MJ covered a laugh with her palm — while May provides snacks (nothing cooked, because she knows she’s not that good of a chef yet).

“Sorry,” he says with a small smile as he reads the flashcard at the top of the pile —  _ This author’s first short story was published in  _ “The New York Saturday Press”  _ in 1865, titled _ “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” — and she sighs. _Mark Twain,_ he answers to himself.

“Don’t apologize, Peter,” she says, finally looking up at him as he does the same, her eyes reflecting blue-white squares of the laptop screen in her pupils. “That just makes me feel mean.”

“You’re not mean, MJ,” he implores her. “You’re not being mean.” He reaches for the hand he knows is there, resting on the tabletop, palm–up, and tucks his own hand under it while caressing MJ’s calloused palm. She reaches for the rest of his hand and he obliges her so that their palms meet, sharing warmth and the tickle of fingertips on their respective wrists.

She says nothing, her only response being the softening of her hard gaze and the closing of the laptop with her free hand as she slouches forward slightly, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “I know,” she says tiredly. “I’m totally slumped, dork. You guys got anything sugary?”

Peter’s already on his feet by the time she says his name, so she’s really talking to his back as he makes his way to the kitchen for the two-liter of Coke he knows they have. He can hear her mumble, “Rude–ass,” under her breath, thanks to his super-hearing, and he laughs. 

“You love it, MJ,” he calls as he peruses the fridge for the bottle. Making a small “aha” noise, he pulls it out of the shelf and sets it down on the kitchen counter, pulling open the cupboard doors to reach for a pair of glasses. As he pours, he sees a pair of socked feet enter the kitchen from his peripheral. When he finishes both glasses, he finally turns around to put the bottle back in the fridge. 

At his left, as he turns, he almost knocks MJ over, who’s leaning against the fridge, arms crossed over her chest. He almost drops the bottle of Coke, but catches himself, tucking it into his chest as he frees one of his hands to grasp at his heart. “Jesus, MJ,” he chides. “You scared me.”

“Clearly,” she says, smirking. “You’re cute when you’re scared.”

The comment makes him stop as he stuffs the bottle back into the shelf he found it in, but then he closes the door of the fridge and stands back up to his full height — which he’s constantly reminded, verbally and non-verbally, is greater than his — looking properly flustered. 

“Yeah, well,” he attempts fruitlessly, splaying a palm out on the door of the fridge, “You’re cute when you’re… you.” 

Peter sees her cheeks heat up, and  _ wow, _ is that all it takes to embarrass her? Shitty, awkward compliments like the one he just uttered? All he can think is,  _ I should have started doing that ages ago. _

“How was that literally the sweetest thing ever?” She mutters, almost like she’s  _ pissed off _ at how sweet he is.

“Get used to it,” he says, smiling, as he offers her the glass of soda. She uncrosses her arms over her chest and takes it, sipping greedily. “Jeez, MJ, not too fast,” he chides before taking a small,  _ monitored  _ sip of his own. “You’ll get hiccups.”

“I appreciate the concern, Parker,” she says irritatedly, wiping at her upper lip, “but I need this caffeine and sugar, so would you kindly,” she takes a minuscule step towards him, but he doesn’t budge, “shut up?”

“Make me,” he breathes out before he can stop himself. Shit. 

She smirks, knowing this is an opportunity she can pounce on and tear to pieces. Before he can react accordingly, she sets her glass down on the counter next to them and captures his lips on her own. He feels her bunching up the fabric of his shirt in her fists at the hem, and all he can do is put his own glass down and place his hands on her arms near her shoulders to keep himself from floating up, up, into the clouds, to never be seen again. 

“Kids…” he hears from the hallway, making him jump, and MJ stumbles slightly backward, gripping the edge of the opposite counter so that she doesn’t trip in her socks. He misses the warmth of her lips against his own, but the warmth that now envelops the entirety of his face and neck is enough to make him forget as he clears his throat and his eyes bug out at May, who leans casually against the doorway of the kitchen as they fumble for an awkward greeting, explanation,  _ something. _

“Was getting her… a drink…” Peter says haltingly —

“Wanted to make sure he didn’t trip over himself,” she says, more quickly, coherently —

“It’s okay, lovebirds,” May’s voice rings out, clearest of all, making both teenagers stop speaking in the same instant. “Peter, I’m heading out for my shift,” she says, gesturing to her scrubs, “don’t get into any…  _ funny business  _ while I’m gone.”

Peter chokes over his own spit.  _ “May,”  _ he protests, sounding violated. MJ makes a similar sound that betrays embarrassment, and that’s when he’s reminded that she, too, is witnessing this terribly awkward situation.

She was the perpetrator, after all. 

“See you tomorrow morning, Pete!” His aunt responds cheerily, offering a wave as she disappears behind the doorway and, a few painful moments later, he hears the door of their apartment opening and closing gently.

“Oh, my God,” one of them says. He doesn’t register who. All he knows is that they’re looking at each other, twiddling their thumbs, averting their gazes every second then meeting for a fleeting instant only to break their gazes once again.

“I didn’t want to study anymore anyway,” MJ says, trying to diffuse the awkwardness. “Couch,” she announces, reaching for her glass and disappearing behind the doorway. 

Peter takes the moment to collect himself, thinking,  _ thank God that’s over, _ and then takes his own glass with him out of the kitchen. He finds her on the living room couch as promised, and she’s leaning back into the cushions like they’re the most comfortable surface she’s ever encountered. 

He chuckles softly as he takes a seat next to her, a good distance away, because he can still feel May’s third eye watching him vigilantly. MJ groans in annoyance, opening her eyes and noticing that he’s sitting a good two feet away from her.

“What, are we leaving room for Jesus or something? Scoot, Peter,” she says, and it’s an order he can’t refuse, as he settles into her side and wraps an arm around her shoulder. She nestles into him, her head landing in the crook of his neck, and the cushiony, tickly sensation of her curls against his bare skin is enough to send chills down his spine. 

“This is nice,” he can’t help but sigh into her hair, and those words make her curl deeper into him, wrapping her hands as best she can around his bicep and allowing her eyelids to flutter in exhaustion.

He rests his head on top of hers, not before gently kissing her hair and squeezing her shoulder carefully. This is  _ really  _ nice. He could get used to this.

When he dozes off into a fleeting, comfortable nap, an image of MJ, with a smile that looks almost second-nature, floods the darkness behind his eyelids, and he dreams of visiting her again at the diner, except their friendly hello and goodbye is a chaste kiss on the lips.

Not everything needs to change for something to be perfect, he realizes. Just the little things are all it takes sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what did you guys think of that finale? i hope you enjoyed it! thank you so much for your continued support of this story! it means the world, really. i might take a break from writing for the time being but i have a few fics in mind for the future! thanks for reading! leave kudos and comment if you made it to the end :) until the next!


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